198 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. Chap. VI. 



as the year 1600. I crossed a male nun with a female red 

 common tumbler, which latter variety generally breeds true. 

 Thus neither parent had a trace of blue in the plumage, or of 

 bars on the wing and tail. I should premise that common 

 tumblers are rarely blue in England. From the above cross 

 I reared several young : one was red over the whole back, but 

 with the tail as blue as that of the rock-pigeon; the ter- 

 minal bar, however, was absent, but the outer feathers were 

 edged with white : a second and third nearly resembled the 

 first, but the tail in both presented a trace of the bar at the end : 

 a fourth was brownish, and the wings showed a trace of the 

 double bar : a fifth was pale blue over the whole breast, back, 

 croup, and tail, but the neck and primary wing-feathers were 

 reddish ; the wings presented two distinct bars of a red colour ; 

 the tail was not barred, but the outer feathers were edged with 

 white. I crossed this last curiously coloured bird with a black 

 mongrel of complicated descent, namely, from a black barb, a 

 spot, and almond tumbler, so that the two young birds produced 

 from this cross included the blood of five varieties, none of which 

 had a trace of blue or of wing and tail -bars : one of the two 

 young birds was brownish-black, with black wing-bars ; the other 

 was reddish-dun, with reddish wing-bars, paler than the rest of 

 the body, with the croup pale blue, the tail bluish, with a trace 

 of the terminal bar. 



Mr. Eaton 27 matched two short-faced tumblers, namely, a splash 

 cock and kite hen (neither of which are blue or barred), and from 

 the first nest he got a perfect blue bird, and from the second a 

 silver or pale blue bird, both of which, in accordance with all 

 analogy, no doubt presented the usual characteristic marks. 



I crossed two male black barbs with two female red spots. 

 These latter have the whole body and wings white, with a spot 

 on the forehead, the tail and tail-coverts red ; the race existed 

 at least as long ago as 1676, and now breeds perfectly true, as 

 was known to be the case in the year 1735. 28 Barbs are uni- 

 formly-coloured birds, with rarely even a trace of bars on the 

 wing or tail ; they are known to breed very true. The mongrels 

 thus raised were black or nearly black, or dark or pale brown, 



27 'Treatise on Pigeons/ 1858, p. ss j Moore's •Columbarium,' 1735, 



145. in J. M. Eaton's edition, 1852, p. 71. 



