CHAPTER LXXVI. 



THE PIGMY POUTER. 



A FEW yeara ago, a chapter in a book on pigeona professing to treat of 

 pigmy pouters agreeing in shape, feather, and carriage with the large 

 English pouter, would have been as much out of place as the well- 

 known chapter on snakes in a certain history of Norway. At present, 

 however, there ia at least one standard-pied, stocking-legged, pigmy 

 pouter, viz., the black-pied hen bred by Captain Norman Hill, of Ealing, 

 in 1879, a pigeon which has been the admiration of all who have seen it. 

 When in London in December, 1879, I called on Captain Hill to see this- 

 pigeon, but it was absent at some show, and since then I have had no 

 opportunity of seeing it ; but I have seen its parents and several of its 

 ancestors. Captain Hill, at my request, has kindly furnished me with an 

 account of it, which I will give in his own words. I may say that I had 

 the impression — a wrong one it appears — that this bird had been produced 

 by a mixture of Norwich cropper and Austrian pigmy pouter blood, and 

 thought that a blue-pied cock which I saw at Captain Hill's, and which 

 is an ancestor of his fine bird, waa a pure Norwich cropper. It was this 

 idea that caused me to express the opinion referred to by Captain Hill, 

 that his bird was descended from croppers. Captain Hill writes as 

 follows : " Some time ago I saw a letter of yours in the Fanciers' 

 Chronicle on the Norwich cropper, which in itself was good, and correctly 

 written ; but therein you ventured a remark which I must take exception 

 to, and which, at the time, I fully intended putting you right on, as far 

 as my strain of pied pigmies are concerned. Tour opinion then was, as 

 far as I can recollect, that my good pigmy that had been produced lately 

 was a cross between the Norwich cropper and the foreigner. Until I went 

 to Colchester, I had never seen a cropper worth looking at ; then I saw one 

 or two in Mr. Boreham's collection, with fair markings and more 



