The English Pouter. 387 



should not prejudice them. I do not auppoae any intelligent breeder 

 would prefer a brick red with an apparently white taU, to a blood 

 red with a dark rump and stained tail. There is no trouble with 

 the tails of black pouters ; however bad their colour, they can always 

 carry it to the end of the tail. In crossing black with blue pouters, 

 smoky blacks, showing wing bars of a darker hue, are a common result. 

 This can be bred out in a series of crosses, but it ruins colour in reds 

 and yellows to breed any such black-bred birds with them. The first 

 cross between black and red, in all varieties of pigeons, however good in 

 colour, often results in a strawberry or sandy. These are of various 

 shades, from such as are very hght, looking as if sanded over, to such 

 as are of a reddish strawberry, many of which are ticked with black. It 

 is well known that some of the best black pieds have been bred from a 

 sandy and a black. Blue pied pouters have always been favourites, and 

 their colour being the most natural one is easiest to breed good. 

 Through crossing with artificial colours, blues have certain inherent 

 faults which must be carefully guarded against. Their wing bars ought 

 to be jet black, but frequently come brown, when they are called kite- 

 barred. Their wing coverts ought to be of a sound dark blue, neither 

 smoky nor dusky, nor so light and silvery that the white rose pinions are 

 with difficulty distinguished on them. White pouters ought to have 

 flesh coloured beaks, and they almost invariably have buU or hazel eyes. 

 It may almost be taken for certain that a white pouter, with its beak 

 even slightly stained, has some coloured feathers about its head. A 

 white pouter with a dark, or partly dark beak, cannot rightly be 

 shown in a class for whites, if the strict letter of the law be enforced, 

 but such a bird is in much the same position as a white- vented black 

 carrier, in a class tor blacks. The difference between them is that the 

 carrier's fault is hidden, while the pouter's is very glaring. There 

 was once a strain of orange-eyed white pouters, but whether they 

 were free of foul feathers I know not. Pure whites with orange eyes 

 would look very weU, and I see no reason why they should not, if ever 

 shown, be allowed to compete with whites, for they would really have an 

 additional property over bull-eyed birds, and one difficult to keep up, as 

 in white jacobins and white tumblers. There would always, however, be 

 a suspicion that they were foul feathered somewhere ; but so there is 

 with other pearl or yeUow-eyed white pigeons. 



