204 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. 



Chap. VI. 



origin : formerly, when I went into my aviaries and watched such 

 birds as pouters, carriers, barbs, fantails, and short-faced tumblers, 

 &c, I could not persuade myself that they had all descended 

 from the same wild stock, and that man had consequently in one 

 sense created these remarkable modifications. Therefore I have 

 argued the question of their origin at great, and, as some will 

 think, superfluous length. 



Finally, in favour of the belief that all the races are descended 

 from a single stock, we have in Columba livia, a still existing and 

 widely distributed species, which can be and has been domesti- 

 cated in various countries. This species agrees in most points 

 of structure and in all its habits of life, as well as occasionally 

 in every detail of plumage, with the several domestic races. It 

 breeds freely with them, and produces fertile offspring. It varies 

 in a state of nature, 30 and still more so when semi-domesticated, 

 as shown by comparing the Sierra Leone pigeons with those 

 of India, or with those which apparently have run wild in 

 Madeira. It has undergone a still greater amount of variation 

 in the case of the numerous toy-pigeons, which no one supposes 

 to be descended from distinct species ; yet some of these toy- 

 pigeons have transmitted their character truly for centuries. 

 Why, then, should we hesitate to believe in that greater amount 

 of variation which is necessary for the production of the eleven 

 chief races ? It should be borne in mind that in two of the most 

 strongly-marked races, namely, carriers and short-faced tumblers, 

 the extreme forms can be connected with the parent-species by 

 graduated differences not greater than those which may be ob- 

 served between the dovecot-pigeons inhabiting different countries, 

 or between the various kinds of toy-pigeons, — gradations which 

 must certainly be attributed to variation. 



That circumstances have been eminently favourable for 

 the modification of the pigeon through variation and selec- 

 tion will now be shown. The earliest record, as has been 

 pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius, of pigeons in a domes- 

 ticated conditiou, occurs in the fifth Egyptian dynasty, about 



30 It deserves notice, as bearing on as mere varieties, but that the species 



the general subject of variation, that of several allied genera are in the same 



not only C. livia presents several wild predicament. This is the case, as Mr. 



forms, regarded by some naturalists as Blyth has remarked to me, with Treron, 



.species and by others as sub-species or Palumbus, and Turtur. 



