50 
CHAPTER VI. 
THE CARRIER. 
How this variety of pigeons obtained the name by which it is known is by no means certain. By 
the various anecdotes he gives, Moore seems to have thought that it was this pigeon that used to 
be employed as a messenger, which is certainly not absolutely impossible, since no doubt its points 
were not so highly developed in those days, and its near relation, the Dragoon, is a very fair 
homing bird. In other words, it may be that the name was given when the bird was little better 
than a modern Dragoon, from which it has been bred up since into the high-class Carrier ; and it 
is indeed perfectly certain that considerable development has been made since Moore’s time, since 
he describes the beak as an inch and a half long, much shorter than would pass muster now. But 
the greatest difficulty about this view is, that the eye-wattle, which is the principal obstacle in 
the way of the bird’s “ flying ” at the present day, is by no means a difficult point to breed, 
and seems to have always existed, since we have any record, in a very high state of perfection. 
Thus, besides the descriptions of the bird in old pigeon writers themselves, we find Lord Orford, in 
his “ Voyage Round the Fens ” (now very rare), making the following remark : “ I observed in 
going to Deeping a man in a one-horse chaise, with large warts round his eyelids, much 
resembling a Carrier Pigeon.” The date of this work is 1774; and it proves, therefore, that 
so much as one hundred years ago the Carrier was heavily wattled round the eye, and not in 
this respect like a Dragoon. 
Some enthusiastic fanciers think the name was bestowed on account of the noble “ carriage ” 
of the bird, which stands and walks like the “ king of pigeons,” as he is universally admitted to be. 
This is an attractive theory ; but, alas ! candour compels us to state that no student of the English 
language can believe in it for one moment, since at the date when the name must have been given 
it could not possibly have been bestowed for such a reason, and even now would be grammatically 
and etymologically incorrect. Perhaps on the whole the first theory is the most probable, in spite 
of its difficulties ; but however this may be, nothing annoys a genuine Carrier fancier more noiv 
than to hear his pets confounded with the “ carrying ” pigeon, which he scarcely considers, we fear, 
as a “fancy” bird at all, and which from his point of view is indeed not so, though it is as strictly 
bred for other qualities as are his own cherished specimens. 
The modern Carrier is indeed of all pigeons, except the Pouter and the Barb, the very least 
adapted to “ carry” messages, the development of wattle round the eye and upon the beak hindering 
the sight so much as to quite incapacitate it for such employment, notwithstanding the fact that the 
flight muscles are the most powerful of all varieties. The young birds, indeed, before their wattles 
are grown, can fly powerfully, and if let out at liberty from the first will continue to fly round their 
house with much freedom, and be better for the exercise ; but if they are let out for the first time 
when come to maturity, the sight is so much obstructed that they are quite timorous, and soon 
become lost. Common birds, in which the wattles are less developed, can of course fly pretty 
