Chap. V INDIVIDUAL VAKI ABILITY. 167 



racterise, with rare exception, whole sub-families. 27 The wild rock- 

 pigeon has twelve tail-feathers. With Fantails, as we have seen, 

 the number varies from fourteen to forty-two. In two young birds 

 in the same nest I counted twenty-two and twenty-seven feathers. 

 Pouters are very liable to have additional tail-feathers, and I have 

 seen on several occasions fourteen or fifteen in my own birds. Mr. 

 Bult had a specimen, examined by Mr. Yarrell, with seventeen tail- 

 feathers. I had a Nun with thirteen, and another with fourteen 

 tail-feathers ; and in a Helmet, a breed barely distinguishable from 

 the Nun, I have counted fifteen, and have heard of other such 

 instances. On the other hand, Mr. Brent possessed a Dragon, which 

 during its whole life never had more than ten tail-feathers ; and one 

 of my Dragons, descended from Mr. Brent's, had only eleven. I 

 have seen a Bald-head Tumbler with only ten; and Mr. Brent 

 had an Air - Tumbler with the same number, but another with 

 fourteen tail-feathers. Two of these latter Tumblers, bred by Mr. 

 Brent, were remarkable, — one from having the two central tail- 

 feathers a little divergent, and the other from having the two outer 

 feathers longer by three-eighths of an inch than the others ; so that 

 in both cases the tail exhibited a tendency, but in different ways, to 

 become forked. And this shows us how a swallow-tailed breed, 

 like that described by Bechstein, might have been formed by careful 

 selection. 



With respect to the primary wing-feathers, the number in the 

 ColumbidaB, as far as I can find out, is always nine or ten. In the 

 rock-pigeon it is ten ; but I have seen no less than eight short-faced 

 Tumblers with only nine primaries, and the occurrence of this 

 number has been noticed by fanciers, owing to ten primaries of 

 a white colour being one of the points in Short-faced Baldhead- 

 Tumblers. Mr. Brent, however, had an Air-Tumbler (not short- 

 faced) which had in both wings eleven primaries. Mr. Corker, the 

 eminent breeder of prize Carriers, assures me that some of his birds 

 had eleven primaries in both wings. I have seen eleven in one 

 wing in two Pouters. I have been assured by three fanciers that 

 they have seen twelve in Scanderoons ; but as Neumeister asserts 

 that in the allied Florence Bunt the middle flight-feather is often 

 double, the number twelve may have been caused by two of the ten 

 primaries having each two shafts to a single feather. The secondary 

 wing-feathers are difficult to count, but the number seems to vary 

 from twelve to fifteen. The length of the wing and tail relatively 

 to the body, and of the wings to the tail, certainly varies; I have 

 especially noticed this in Jacobins. In Mr. Bult's magnificent col- 



27 ' Coup-d'oeil sur l'Ordre des Pi- Ectopistes, which are nearly allied to 



geons,'par C. L. Bonaparte ('Comptes each other, one should have fourteen 



Kendus'), 1854-55. Mr. Blyth, in tail-feathers, while the other, the 



'Annals of Nat. Hist.,' vol. xix., 1847, passenger pigeon of North America, 



p. 41, mentions, as a very singular should possess but the usual numfcei 



fact, " that of the two species of — twelve.'' 



