212 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. Chap. Vi; 



with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long 

 legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, 

 well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, 

 and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could 

 have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in 

 India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the 

 Jacobin with a less perfect hood ; the Turbit apparently without 

 its frill ; the Pouter with shorter legs, and in every way less 

 remarkable— that is, if Aldrovandi's Pouter resembled the old 

 German kind ; the Fantail would have been far less singular in 

 appearance, and would have had much fewer feathers in its tail ; 

 he would have seen excellent flying Tumblers, but he would in 

 vain have looked for the marvellous short-faced breeds; he 

 would have seen birds allied to barbs, but it is extremely 

 doubtful whether he would have met with our actual Barbs ; and 

 lastly, he would have found Carriers with beaks and wattle in- 

 comparably less developed than in our English Carriers. He 

 might have classed most of the breeds in the same groups as 

 at present ; but the differences between the groups were then far 

 less strongly pronounced than at present. In short, the several 

 breeds had at this early period not diverged in so great a degree 

 from their aboriginal common parent, the wild rock-pigeon. 



Manner of Formation of the chief Races. 



We will now consider more closely the probable steps by 

 which the chief races have been formed. As long as pigeons 

 are kept semi-domesticated in dovecots in their native country, 

 without any care in selecting and matching them, they are liable 

 to little more variation than the wild C. Uvia, namely, in the 

 wings becoming chequered with black, in the croup being blue 

 or white, and in the size of the body. When, however, dovecot- 

 pigeons are transported into diversified countries, such as Sierra 

 Leone, the Malay archipelago, and Madeira (where the wild 

 0. Uvia is not known to exist), they are exposed to new con- 

 ditions of life ; and apparently in consequence they vary in a 

 somewhat greater degree. When closely confined, either for 

 the pleasure of watching them, or to prevent their straying, 

 they must be exposed, even under their native climate, to 



