5G2 
THE president’s address. 
behalf of this Society. To him it has assuredly been a labour of 
love to help iu the way he has done, and that his absence from the 
official post he held so long will mean no diminution in his hearty 
desire for the welfare of an association now twenty years old, wo 
may be certain. 
In his successor, Mr. E. Corder, we have one who is fond of 
natural science in all its many branches, to whom wo hold out the 
hand of welcome on his assumption of office. 
As it is usual for each President to occupy some portion of his 
Address, on retiring from the presidential chair, with the considera- 
tion of some scientific subject, I will lay before you a few notes 
on Hybridism among Eirds, in continuation of some which have 
been published in the ‘Zoologist ’ and in your ‘Transactions.’ In 
the first place I will refer to a supposed crossing between a Stock 
Dove and our Domesticated Pigeon. 
Whether the Stock Dove {Columha (unafi) described in the 
‘ Zoologist’ (1885, p. 150) by Mr. Whitaker, killed in Nottingham- 
shire, was really a cross between that species and a tame Pigeon, or 
whether it was merely a pied variety of the Stock Dove, it would be 
difficult to decide ; but the fact of its being on record that the two 
have crossed in a semi-domestic state is evidence that Mr. Whitaker’s 
bird may be what ho suspects, viz., a hybrid. I refer to the 
experiences of Mr. Lingwood, and to a discussion which took place 
in the ‘Field’ some years ago on this subject between a 
gentleman who signed himself C. L. S. and the late !Mr. B. P. 
Brent. Mr. Brent’s success was this — he paired a cock Stock Dove 
with a hen Dragon Pigeon, and a hen Stock Dove with a cock 
Antwerp Pigeon. From these about thirty hybrids were hatched, 
of which four grew up. The one which lived longest was bred 
from the hen Stock Dove. In the same way the experiences of 
]Mr. Lingwood, related in Churchill Babington’s ‘ Birds of Suffolk ’ 
(p. 105), attest the possibility of a cross between a tame Pigeon and 
a Stock Dove, but probably the progeny would be generally barren. 
This, however, was not the case with Mr. Lingwood’s, for tlie 
hybrid “ paired [with a domestic Pigeon] and brought up young 
ones the following season.” 
