THE BIRMINGHAM STANDARD. 91 



acknowledged by nearly all breeders; but as this is verbally 

 denied still by a few Birmingham fanciers, it next becomes 

 necessary to prove very briefly how the " Birmingham school," 

 as it is called, has itself steadily approached it of late, tUl there 

 is now no important difference. In the year 1870, then, a 

 Birmingham Dragoon fancier described the bir.d as having a 

 " long, flat, narrow head, straight thin bill, and prominent 

 eye ; " and Mr. Ludlow, a well-known Birmingham authority, 

 further described the Birmingham type as follows : — " Head 

 long and straight ; skull narrow, well developed at the back ; 

 eye-lash white and circular ; neck long, lender, and graceful ; 

 legs long, clean, and angular ; bearing of a timid, tremulous 

 kind ; " and he further describes the wings as " sharp- 

 pointed." 



Mr. Ludlow accompanied his description with a drawing, of 

 which we give an accurate tracing on the opposite page, which 

 was stated to represent a hen of mature age, and in which we 

 unquestionably see a vast difference from even the moderated 

 London type of the cock shown on page 87. The beak is 

 longer and thinner, there is less wattle by far, the legs are much 

 longer, and the whole bird is much more slim ; the 

 crown of the head is also flat. The differences are 

 so sharp and clear as to be beyond dispute. 



Going on, however, a few years from this 

 descriptipn and figure, Mr. Ludlow, in 1874, 

 tempered down the description of the skull to 

 "rather narrow;" and while he still calls the beak 

 "long," gives it as If inches, the same length as 

 the then London standard. He also termed it 

 " strong," but accompanied this description with ^'s- ^^■ 

 the drawing reproduced in Fig. 22, which, as 

 compared with the bird on page 87, shows a beak decidedly 

 thin. In Fulton's "Book of Pigeons," however, in 1875, Mr. 

 Ludlow claims for the Birmingham type of Dragoon " a nice, 



