220 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. Chap. VI. 



portions of their beaks. So again in Java, the fantail some- 

 times has only fourteen caudal feathers, and the tail is much 

 less elevated and expanded than in our improved birds ; so that 

 the Java bird forms a link between a first-rate fantail and the 

 rock-pigeon. 



Occasionally a breed may be retained for some particular 

 quality in a nearly unaltered condition in the same country, 

 together with highly modified offshoots or sub-breeds, which are 

 valued for some distinct property. We see this exemplified in 

 England, where the common tumbler, which is valued only 

 for its flight, does not differ much from its parent-form, the 

 Eastern tumbler; whereas the short-faced tumbler has been 

 prodigiously modified, from being valued, not for its flight, but 

 for other qualities. But the common-flying tumbler of Europe 

 has already begun to branch out into slightly different sub- 

 breeds, such as the common English tumbler, the Dutch roller, 

 the Glasgow house-tumbler, and the long-faced beard tumbler, 

 &c. ; and in the course of centuries, unless fashions greatly 

 change, these sub-breeds will diverge through the slow and in- 

 sensible process of unconscious selection, and become modified, 

 in a greater and greater degree. After a time the perfectly 

 graduated links which now connect all these sub-breeds together, 

 will be lost, for there would be no object and much difficulty 

 in "retaining such a host of intermediate sub-varieties. * 



The principle of divergence, together with the extinction of 

 the many previously existing intermediate . forms, is so im- 

 portant for understanding the origin of domestic races, as 

 well as of species in a state of nature, that I will enlarge a 

 little more on this subject. Our third main group includes 

 carriers, barbs, and runts, which are plainly related to each 

 other, yet wonderfully distinct in several important characters. 

 According to the view given in the last chapter, these three 

 races have probably descended from an unknown race having 

 an intermediate character, and this from the rock-pigeon. Their 

 characteristic differences are believed to be due to different 

 breeders having at an early period admired different points of 

 structure ; and then, on the acknowledged principle of admiring 

 extremes, having gone on breeding, without any thought of the 

 future, as good birds as they could, — carrier-fanciers preferring 



