ORIGIN OF THE POUTER. 141 



man, a long-bodied and long-feathered bird. The Cropper 

 seems to have been the origin of a tribe of several varieties, and 

 to have been remarkable only for a large inflated crop and 

 feathered legs ; differing from our Pouter in having the thighs 

 wide apart, and having no upright carriage. Mr. Ure cannot 

 see* " how such a cross could produce a bird like the English 

 Pouter,'' and says that Moore "does not speak from his own 

 personal experience;" but this is a purely gratuitous assump- 

 tion, and an objection to his account which nothing in the text 

 justifies. It is at least more likely that the cross with a long- 

 feathered bird should have improved length of body and 

 feather, besides making the bird close-thighed, as Moore 

 actually affirms it did, than that the bird was produced solely 

 by breeding up the Dutch Cropper alone, recognised as a 

 distinct variety by Moore himself; and we do know positively 

 that long since his time the cross with a Runt has been 

 employed repeatedly in Pouter breeding to give size, the 

 consequent thickness of girth having to be bred out again. 

 Moore writes contemporaneously, as of a matter he was 

 perfectly familiar with, that "this pigeon, which was first 

 bred in England, and is therefore called the English Pouter, is 

 originally a mixed breed between a Horseman and a Cropper, 

 and by matching their young ones over and over to the 

 Cropper, experience teaches us it will add a wonderful beauty to 

 this bird, and raise in it the five following properties." Nothing 

 can be plainer, and we may add that nothing is so inherently 

 probable. 



Of the allied varieties mentioned, the Cropper is already 

 alluded to : it seems to have had no property but a very large 

 crop, produced (no one knows how) by developing the power all 

 pigeons have to some extent of inflating the crop with air. 

 We have seen signs of the same power in fowls and once in a 

 blackbird. The Parisian Pouter, Moore says, resembled a Pouter, 

 * "Book of Pigeona," p. 97. 



