CHAPTER VIII. 



The Crossing and the Close-Interbreeding of Pigeons 

 and of Fowls. 



Each of the species, Pigeon and Fowl, affords a 

 crucial instance of the truth of that theory of inter- 

 breeding, which is deducible from the assumption of 

 reversion. 



It has already been shown in Chapter vi, on 

 The Processes of Formation of Varieties, that, with 

 Pigeons and Fowls, all or most of the characters, re- 

 spectively lost or reduced by those species, have been 

 regained, not concurrently, but each character, in a dif- 

 ferent variety. Man, it has been shown, there looks to 

 the development of only one of such lost or reduced 

 characters, in each variety. In the Fantail, the charac- 

 ter, which such name connotes, is alone regained, and 

 its development pushed to an extreme point; whilst 

 the rest of the long-lost or reduced parts are suf- 

 fered to remain respectively reduced, and suppressed. 

 In the Pouter variety of the Pigeon, the individuals 

 "show" such "adaptation to his (man's) wants and 

 pleasures," and "have been" so "modified not for their 

 own benefit, but for that of man," that the individuals 

 of this variety (for instance), lack all, or nearly, all, of 

 the positive peculiarities of the other one hundred and 



forty-nine varieties of the said species. 



(242) 



