HEAD OF CARRIER. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE ENGLISH CAERIEE. 



UNDER the name of Carrier pigeons several very distinct varieties are com- 

 monly confounded together. The term Carrier, as applied to pigeons, 

 evidently was first employed to signify those breeds that were used to convey or 

 carry messages to their own homes from distant places. In the process of time it 

 has been used by English fanciers to signify a very artificial or high-class breed, 

 the birds of which are never employed for carrying messages, but are valued solely 

 in proportion to the perfection of certain " properties " that they possess. This is 

 an unfortunate circumstance, for by the public at large the term Carrier is always 

 taken to express the fact that the birds to which it is applied are really those 

 employed to " carry " messages ; whereas the long-distance flying birds, those 

 known more correctly as "Homing" birds, or " Les Pigeons Voyageurs," are 

 totally distinct. Hence it will be desirable to describe these breeds in separate 

 chapters, and we shall first consider the high-class fancy, or English Carrier. 



Of the origin of this valued breed there is no special record. All domesticated 

 pigeons have a tendency to variation in the amount of naked membrane around 

 the eye and over the nostrils, and this, when growing to an unusual extent, having 

 pleased the taste of the early fanciers, has been propagated by careful breeding, 

 increased by the process of artificial selection, and conjoined to an extremely 

 elongated beak and well-developed limbs, until at last the English Carrier has 

 been produced. 



The term English Carrier may be applied to this breed with strict accuracy, for 

 in no other country do birds exist possessing their characters. There are to be 

 found in other countries birds with the membrane around the eye highly developed, 

 as, for example, those known as Barbs. Others have the beak extremely elongated, 

 as the Scanderoons, the Bagndctten of the Germans, and the Bagadais of the 



