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PIGEOXS. 



ground, others on a clear blue, which are very pretty ; some of them are spangled 

 with buff, fawn, or red-brown, instead of the creamy white ; some of the French 

 birds are much larger than the German, and seem as if they had been crossed with 

 other large birds." 



Under the title of Hyacinths, Victorias, Porcelains, &c, large spangled varieties 

 are often shown ; some of these have evidently been crossed with the short-legged 

 Continental Pouter, as they innate their crops to some slight extent when flying. 



Another group of German Toys well known at our shows is that of which the 

 Priest, Brunswick, and Letz Pigeons may be taken as the representatives. The 

 Priests are of various colours, with broad turn-crowns, white heads, white wing 

 bars, and sometimes a white bar across the tail. Neumeister, a well-known Ger- 

 man writer on pigeons, enumerates the following varieties : — 



1st. The Black Priest pigeon ; both with and without the white wing bars, 

 and occasionally with the spangled shoulders of the Suabian pigeon cross. 2nd. 

 The Blue Priest pigeon, with either black or white wing bars ; also occasionally 

 spangled like the foregoing. 3rd. The Brown-red Priest pigeon ; these rarely have 

 the white wing bars, but when they do, the flight and tail are usually strawberry- 

 coloured. The chief point is to have them of an uniform dark brown-red. 

 4th. The Yellow Priest pigeon : has markings similar to the red, and is equally 

 rare with white wing bars. 5th. The Wild Blue Priest pigeon ; their colour is 

 a light or mealy blue, with the white head, like all the others, but without any 

 other mark whatever, not even the black wing bars so common to blue pigeons 

 These are, however, not very plentiful." 



Under the absurd title of Blue Brunswicks a variety is often shown, in which 

 the flight feathers, wing bars, and head are white, the rest of the plumage being 

 blue. 



Under the name of Letz pigeons a similar variety was shown a few years since. 

 The body was entirely white ; the head was ornamented with a good sized 

 turned crown, and the feet were well feathered. The shoulder only was coloured, 

 the wing bars being white. 



Ice pigeons, as they are called, have recently been much shown ; they may 

 be described as being generally silver or pale-blue in colour, of the ordinary dove- 

 house form, with white wing bars, and with or without chequered wings, having 

 the feet more or less feathered. 



The Swallow is a variety that sometimes has a class awarded it at our pigeon 

 shows. Mr. Brent was a great admirer of this very pretty breed, and we willingly 

 take his description as the best that has been published : — 



" This beautiful variety of Toy pigeon is called by the French Hirondelle de 

 mer, and by the Germans Die See Sclmalben Taube, or for shortness simply 

 Schicalbcn Taubcn, which literally means Swallow pigeon ; but as they derive their 

 name from their marking, which resembles that of a small kind of seagull, called 

 a Tern, though known to the French and Germans as a Sea Swallow, it follows 

 that the name Swallow pigeons, as commonly applied to them in this country, is 



