200 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. Chap. VI. 



The last case which I will give is the most curious. I paired 

 a mongrel female barb-fantail with a mongrel male barb-spot ; 

 neither of which mongrels had the least blue about them. Let 

 it be remembered that blue barbs are excessively rare; that 

 spots, as has been already stated, were perfectly characterized in 

 the year 1676, and breed perfectly true; this likewise is the 

 case with white fantails, so much so that I have never heard 

 of white fantails throwing any other colour. Nevertheless the 

 offspring from the above two mongrels was of exactly the same 

 blue tint as that of the wild rock-pigeon from the Shetland 

 Islands over the whole back and wings ; the double black wing- 

 bars were equally conspicuous ; the tail was exactly alike in all 

 its characters, and the croup was pure white ; the head, however, 

 was tinted with a shade of red, evidently derived from the spot, 

 and was of a paler blue than in the rock-pigeon, as was the 

 stomach. So that two black barbs, a red spot, and a white 

 fantail, as the four purely-bred grandparents, produced a bird of 

 the same general blue colour, together with every characteristic 

 mark, as in the wild Columba livia. 



With respect to crossed breeds frequently producing blue birds 

 chequered with black, and resembling in all respects both the 

 dovecot-pigeon and the chequered wild variety of the rock- 

 pigeon, the statement before referred to by MM. Boitard and 

 Corbie would almost suffice ; but I will give three instances of 

 the appearance of such birds from crosses in which one alone 

 of the parents or great-grandparents was blue, but not chequered. 

 I crossed a male blue turbit with a snow-white trumpeter, and 

 the following year with a dark, leaden -brown, short -faced 

 tumbler; the offspring from the first cross were as perfectly 

 chequered as any dovecot-pigeon; and from the second, so much 

 so as to be nearly as black as the most darkly chequered rock- 

 pigeon from Madeira. Another bird, whose great-grandparents 

 were a white trumpeter, a white fantail, a white red-spot, a red 

 runt, and a blue pouter, was slaty-blue and chequered exactly 

 like a dovecot-pigeon. I may here add a remark made to me 



wings, but the whole tail and tail-coverts white all over, except the tail and upper 

 were dark bluish-grey. Another mon- tail-coverts, which were pale fawn, and 

 grel, whose four grandparents were a except the faintest trace of double wing- 

 red runt, white trumpeter, white fantail, bars of the same pale fawn tint, 

 and the same blue pouter, was pure 



