148 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. Chap. V. 



wards. The breast is broad and protuberant. The feet are small. The 

 carriage of the bird is very different from that of other pigeons ; in good 

 birds the head touches the tail-feathers, which consequently often be- 

 come crumpled. They habitually tremble much ; and their necks have an 

 extraordinary, apparently convulsive, backward and forward movement. 

 Good birds walk in a singular manner, as if their small feet were stiff. 

 Owing to their large tails, they fly badly on a windy day. The dark- 

 coloured varieties are generally larger than white Fantails. 



Although between the best and common Fantails, now existing in 

 England, there is a vast difference in the position and size of the tail, in 

 the carriage of the head and neck, in the convulsive movements of the 

 neck, in the manner of walking, and in the breadth of the breast, the 

 differences so graduate away, that it is impossible to make more than one 

 sub-race. Moore, however, an excellent old authority, 14 says, that in 

 1735 there were two sorts of broad-tailed shakers {i.e. fantails), "one 

 having a neck much longer and more slender than the other;" and I am 

 informed by Mr. B. P. Brent that there is an existing German Fantail 

 with a thicker and shorter beak. 



Sub-race If. Java Fantail. — Mr. Swinhoe sent me from Amoy, in China, 

 the skin of a Fantail belonging to a breed known to have been imported 

 from Java. It was coloured in a peculiar manner, unlike any European 

 Fantail, and, for a Faintail, had a remarkably short beak. Although a 

 good bird of the kind, it had only 14 tail-feathers; but Mr. Swinhoe 

 lias counted in other birds of this breed from 18 to 24 tail-feathers. From 

 a rough sketch sent to me, it is evident that the tail is not so much 

 expanded or so much upraised as in even second-rate European Fantails. 

 The bird shakes its neck like our Fantails. It had a well-developed oil- 

 gland. Fantails were known in India, as we shall hereafter see, before 

 the year 1600 ; and we may suspect that in the Java Fantail we see the 

 breed in its earlier and less improved condition. 



Eace VI. — Turbit and Owl. (Moven-Taube : Pigeons a 



cravate.) 



Feathers divergent along the front of the neck and breast ; beak 

 very short, vertically rather thick ; oesophagus somewhat enlarged. 



Turbits and Owls differ from each other slightly in the shape of the head, 

 in the former having a crest, and in the curvature of the beak, but they 

 may be here conveniently grouped together. These pretty birds, some 

 of which are very small, can be recognised at once by the feathers irre- 

 gularly diverging, like a frill, along the front of the neck, in the same 

 manner, but in a less degree, as along the back of the neck in the Jacobin. 

 This bird has the remarkable habit of continually and momentarily inflating 

 the upper part of the oesophagus, which causes a movement in the frill. 



14 See the two excellent editions pub- 1858, entitled 'A Treatise on Fancy 

 lislied by Mr. J. M. Eaton in 1852 and Pigeons.' 



