Chap. I. DOMESTIC PIGEONS. 21 



of the London Pigeon Clubs. The diversity of the 

 breeds is something astonishing. Compare the English 

 carrier and the short-faced tumbler, and see the won- 

 derful difference in their beaks, entailing corresponding 

 differences in their skulls. The carrier, more especially 

 the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful 

 development of the carunculated skin about the head, 

 and this is accompanied by greatly elongated eyelids, 

 very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a wide 

 gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a beak 

 in outline almost like that of a finch ; and the common 

 tumbler has the singular and strictly inherited habit of 

 flying at a great height in a compact flock, and tumbling 

 in the air head over heels. The runt is a bird of great 

 size, with long, massive beak and large feet; some of 

 the sub-breeds of runts have very long necks, others very 

 long wings and tails, others singularly short tails. The 

 barb is allied to the carrier, but, instead of a very long 

 beak, has a very short and very broad one. The pouter 

 has a much elongated body, wings, and legs ; and its 

 enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, 

 may well excite astonishment and even laughter. The 

 turbit has a very short and conical beak, with a line of 

 reversed feathers down the breast ; and it has the habit 

 of continually expanding slightly the upper part of the 

 oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much 

 reversed along the back of the neck that they form 

 a hood, and it has, proportionally to its size, much 

 elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and 

 laugher, as their names express, utter a very different 

 coo from the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or 

 even forty tail-feathers, instead of twelve or fourteen, 

 the normal number in all members of the great pigeon 

 family ; and these feathers are kept expanded, and are 

 carried so erect that in good birds the head and tail 



