216 The Illustrated Book of Plgeoas. 
They are points of bad Carriers, simply “bred down” or dwarfed, and, in fact, bad Carriers 
in miniature ; and any who wish this type can easily breed it in the following manner : 
Get a Blue Dragoon hen of a clear blue, even if of a silvery cast ; and match it to a fourth- 
rate or very late-bred Blue Carrier cock with a white rump. By this cross you are 
almost sure to get good colour, good black bars, a nice long skewer beak, narrow skull, and 
circular eye-wattle ; and also another property Blue Carriers are seldom deficient in, a good 
length of feather, and long legs and thighs. Any who desire them can easily obtain them in this 
way. But as our own ideas of the Dragoon were derived years ago from those very districts which, 
in our opinion, made the bird and then handed it down to the present generation, viz. : — London, 
Manchester, Newcastle, and the districts round them ; we cannot depart from the traditions which 
we knew have been thus handed down from father to son. We have not, it is true, sought to force 
our ideas upon others, and hence we have requested Mr. Ludlow, one of the steadiest and 
most able advocates of the so-called “ Birmingham ” Dragoon, both to state his ideas of the 
bird, and to represent that ideal as with the “ London ” fancy ; but passing by the fact that 
his ideas, as now described, are not in all respects the same as formerly advocated and pourtrayed 
by him, there are considerable differences in even the three birds he has put before us ; and 
as he has freely criticised our views, it is not unimportant to point them out. The brown-barred 
Silver, then, shows a fine pointed beak, though somewhat thicker than what Mr. Ludlow 
has formerly upheld. The Blue, however, shows quite a different class of beak, being a great 
deal larger and thicker than the Silver, and in fact having the appearance of a “ made ” 
Carrier’s beak, and looking nearly, if not quite as long, for the size of the bird, as a Carrier’s. 
Thirdly, we come to the dark-barred Silver, which differs both in length, shape, and 
thickness of beak, and which we would, in fact, willingly accept as our ideal of a young 
Dragoon’s head in all but eye-wattle, and is, indeed, in all but that one point even more to our 
taste than the young Blue Mr. Ludlow has drawn as our ideal of a young “ London ” bird. Seeing, 
then, these three types, differing even from each other, we cannot wonder they differ from us ; but 
we must add that we have never yet seen a specimen of the so-called “Birmingham” Dragoon, 
which resembled either Mr. Ludlow’s Blue or black-barred Silver, and for many years now 
we have attended the Birmingham Show and various meetings of the Birmingham Dragoon 
fanciers. This, however, is perhaps scarcely a fair objection, since no doubt the birds are 
given as ideals to be aimed at. Taking them in that sense, the eye-wattle we may pass, 
though we doubt if a Dragoon was ever seen as represented in the shape of* that part; 
but coming to our friend’s main contention, that a Dragoon should never at any time show 
more beak-wattle than is seen in these representations, we say positively that such is possible 
if they stick to the fine beak of the brown-barred Silver; but that they will find it im- 
possible to breed birds with such beaks as represented on the dark-barred Silver, or Blue, which 
will not show, when mature, much more zuattle. Such never has been seen yet, and we believe 
never will be ; for as soon as you get a well-formed, thick beak on a Dragoon, so soon do you, 
willing or unwilling, get with it a beak-wattle of fair dimensions; while a thin spindle-beak, on the 
contrary, is an equally sure guarantee of little wattle on the beak and generally too much round the 
eye. Our own plates, on the other hand, are not, as is the case with many pigeons shown in this 
work, mere ideals ; we have seen and know now birds fully equal to them in the possession of 
various fanciers, and they are not in any sense artificial standards, except so far as the reproductive 
process of printing them may have failed in some cases to convey the exact shade of colour in any 
of our pigeons. But we do not consider a bird showing more beak-wattle than we have represented 
(the plate of the Yellow Dragoon showing the outside development we would allow) eligible to 
