DOMESTIC PIGEONS. 21 



we treat of Selection. We shall then, also, see how it is that the 

 several hreeds so often have a somewhat monstrous character. It 

 is also a most favourable circumstance for the production of dis- 

 tinct breeds, that male and female pigeons can he easily mated for 

 life; and thus different hreeds can he kept together in the same 

 aviary. 



I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some, 

 yet quite insufficient, length ; because when I first kept pigeons 

 and watched the several kinds, well knowing how truly they breed, 

 I felt fully as much difficulty in believing that since they had been 

 domesticated they had all proceeded from a common parent, as any 

 naturalist could in coming to a similar conclusion in regard to the 

 many speci-es of finches, or other groups of birds, in nature. One 

 circumstance has struck me much; namely, that nearly all the 

 breeders of the various domestic animals and the cultivators of 

 plants, with whom I have conversed, or whose treatises I have read, 

 are firmly convinced that the several breeds to which each has at- 

 tended, are descended from so many aboriginally distinct species. 

 Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of Hereford cattle, whether 

 his cattle might not have descended from Long-horns, or both from 

 a common parent-stock, and he will laugh you to scorn. I have 

 never met a pigeon, or poultry, or duck, or rabbit fancier, who was 

 not fully convinced that each main breed was descended from a dis- 

 tinct species. Yan Mons, in his treatise on pears and apples, shows 

 how utterly he disbelieves that the several sorts, for instance a 

 Eihston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have proceeded from the 

 seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples could be given. 

 The explanation, I think, is simple: from long-continued study 

 they are strongly impressed with the differences between the several 

 races ; and though they well know that each race varies slightly, 

 for they win their prizes by selecting such slight differences, yet 

 they ignore all general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their 

 minds slight differences accumulated during many successive gene- 

 rations. May not those naturalists who, knowing far less of the 

 laws of inheritance than does the breeder, and knowing no more 

 than he does of the intermediate finks in the long fines of descent, 

 yet admit that many of our domestic races are descended from the 

 same parents — may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they 

 deride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendants 

 of other species ? 



