Foreign Cropper Pigeons. 313 



-Frenohman as a Dutchman. Moore's Dutch cropper was evidently a 

 bird with much resemblance to the Pomeranian, so it is not unlikely that 

 this pigeon, "flagthigh'd," as Moore says, was the ancestor of our pouter. 

 The horseman cross would take the feathers from its legs at first, evidence 

 of which I have adduced from the Treatise of 1765, and from the descrip- 

 tion of my old painting of the time of Moore ; but leg feathering, to suit 

 the taste of fanciers, was quickly recovered. Aa to solid shoulders being 

 infinitely preferable to bishoped wings, there is no doubt ; but the 

 Pomeranian breed itself is evidently not altogether free of white " daubs " 

 on the wing, as they call them. As to deducing both varieties from 

 the old bald-headed, long-bodied German cropper, already referred to, 

 I can see nothing in the argument at all. The correct crop marking of the 

 English pouter and similarly marked breeds must necessarily vary very 

 considerably in breeding, there being no certainty in the production of a 

 white mark which has no structural conformation in the bird to guide it, 

 such as a white head, wings, or tail. The rose-pinion for the same reason is 

 a difiioult mark to breed. Hence, pouters come, and must always come, 

 more or less close or open-marked. The crop is sometimes seen solid or 

 free of white, and sometimes the bib is wanting ; the bird is then 

 swallow-throated, and a white blaze on the forehead often appears. The 

 same may appear on a bird correctly marked on the crop. No one would 

 adduce a white blaze on the forehead of a shortfaced mottled tumbler 

 from baldhead blood. The little Norwich cropper, from careless 

 breeding, is very subject to the blaze face. I have seen runta, imported 

 from abroad, some of which I had, marked exactly as the pouter ought 

 to be marked, except that they had no white feathers on the shoulders. 

 They weighed over 31b. per pair. It is something for one who admires 

 hia own breed so much as Herr Hevernick does, to allow that a pattern 

 EngUsh pouter "must positively please" a fancier more than a pattern 

 Pomeranian. It is unlikely that many English pouters of the first 

 quality have been seen in Germany, because they easily sell here for 

 several times the price foreigners will give for them. Were English 

 fanciers to breed for soUd shoulders they could very easily accomplish 

 their desire ; but they consider the rose-pinion such a set-off to a bird 

 that they will not abandon it ; and, although it is rare to see it well 

 defined, it is seen now and then. 



Herr Hevernick says that it was Dr. Bodinus who named the 



