National Standard Squab Book. 49 
examining the skin. Having found the bird which is at fault, kill it. This 
point has come up continually in our correspondence. The erroneous be- 
lief that white-feathered birds produce the whitest-skinned squabs seems 
to be widespread and we are asked sometimes for a flock of breeders “all 
white.” Our experience with all white Homers is that they have less 
stamina than the colored ones. (This is also the experience of poultrymen 
with ali white fowls; they are not hardy.) The marketmen will take two 
or three pairs of dark-skinned squabs in a bunch without comment, but 
an excess of dark ones will provoke a cut in price. Breeders who are ship- 
ping only the undressed squabs should pluck feathers now and then to 
see Just what color of squabs they are getting. The dark-colored squabs 
are just as good eating as the light-colored ones, but buyers for the hotels 
and clubs, and those who visit the stalls generally, pick out the plump. 
white-skinned syuabs in preference to the plump dark-skinned ones. As 
a rule, squabs from Homer pigeons are white-skinned—the dark-colored 
squab is an exception. i 
Many beginners wish to know if it will be all right for them to ‘buy a 
flock and keep it in one house for six months or a year, paying no atten- 
tion to the mating of the young birds, but leaving that to themselves, so 
as to get without much trouble a large flock before the killing of the 
squabs for market ‘begins. Certainly, you may do this, providing extra 
nest-boxes from time to time until your squab house has been filled with 
nests; then you will have to provide overflow quarters. We are asked if 
the flock will not become weakened by inbreeding, that is, a brother bird 
mating up to a sister, by chance. According to the law of chances, such 
matings would take place not very often. Pigeons in a wild state, on the 
face of a cliff, or in an abandoned building, would mate by natural selec- 
tion. The stronger bird gets the object of its affection, the weaker one is 
killed off or gets a weaker mate, whose young are shorter-lived, so the in- 
evitable result is more strength and larger size. Nature works slowly, if 
surely. A lot of pigeons in one pen mating as they please when old enough 
is the natural way, and if you follow this, you cannot go very far wrong. 
We advocate matings by the breeder because it hurries Nature along the 
path which makes most money for the breeder. We all know how Darwin 
studied natural and forced selection vf pigeons. He took one pigeon with 
a certain peculiarity, say a full breast, and mated it to another pigeon with 
a full breast. The squabs from these birds, when grown, had breasts 
fuller than their parents. Then these in turn were mated to full-breasted 
pigeons from other parents, and the* grand-children had even larger 
breasts. Darwin’s experiments covered a period of over twenty years 
and in this time he developed little faults and peculiarities to an amazing 
degree. Every intelligent, careful pigeon breeder is striving by his forced 
matings to push along the path of progress the peculiarity in pigeons 
which is his specialty. The breeder who selects most carefully and keeps 
at it the longest wins over the others. By selecting from your best and 
most prolific breeders the biggest and fattest squabs, keeping them for 
