232 
The Illustrated Booll of Plgeons. 
the best bird in other points look coarse, common, and bad. Such a wattle at the age of three or 
four years looks hideous, especially in the eyes of a good judge, and though a portion is in such 
cases often carved away from the front or top of the wattle, to make the bird more presentable 
in appearance, little improvement results ; the bird is bad at the best, and cannot be made 
a good one. But, as a rule, the correct, wide-fronted, “ square ” skull is generally attended with 
the next important property of good and even eye-wattle, something near equally large and 
equally thick all round the eye. Even of good eye-wattles, however, there are two classes. One 
may be called a soft or fleshy eye, which is preferred by many, and is generally pretty regular in 
build all round ; besides which, it takes much less time to become fully developed than the other 
kind, which we may call, for convenience, the hard, wrinkled, or laced wattle. Still, though with 
these advantages in build and time, it has its faults, being very liable to show the same formation 
which is so admired in the Carrier (as adding to narrowness of skull), but is correspondingly 
hated in a Barb. This form consists in being convex in shape, or thicker towards the eye than at 
the edges. At a side view this does not matter ; but from the front this makes the wattle look as 
if rolling over the skull, and thus to appear narrower than, perhaps, it really is. In fact, a really 
wide-skulled bird, or one which appears so, is rarely seen with such a wattle. We may, in fact, 
compare the two classes of wattle to one of the old-fashioned “ dished ” bone buttons. The soft 
wattle resembles the convex side, making the skull wider at the eyes than at the edges of the 
wattle ; whereas, the other wattle resembles the dished or concave side, the eye being in the 
hollow centre, and the skull, as will be readily understood, appearing far wider. The thicker one 
of these last wattles is, 'the wider and more square does the skull appear ; and when looked at from 
the front, the wattles seem to “ stand out ” well from the skull, adding yet more to the finely- 
chiselled appearance of the head we have already spoken of as the great point. The soft wattle 
again, being so thin at the edges, appears there nearly smooth, most of the wrinkling being 
towards the centre, whilst the other is regularly indented or wrinkled round the circumference. 
Certainly the last class of eye-wattle is what we most admire, and which shows up to most 
advantage the various head properties of a high-class Barb ; and it is also less liable than the other 
to disease ; the soft wattle, as in Carriers, being much more liable to catch cold, to become 
inflamed, and also to form spouts, which then require removal ; and as the wattle of a Barb is so 
very much thicker than that of a Carrier, in order to give width to the head, such surgical 
operations, which should be performed in the same way, are in this pigeon attended by much more 
risk, and give much more trouble to bring to a satisfactory conclusion ; in fact, it is no easy matter 
for even an experienced fancier to operate for “ spouts ” with complete success on a fleshy-eyed 
Barb. ’ 
The hard or wrinkled wattle therefore is, on the whole, to be preferred, though it takes one 
season more to develop, and, in fact, can rarely be shown genuinely with much hope of success 
under twelve months old, the soft-wattled young birds looking so much more fully-developed and 
attractive to the eye. Hence, a breeder who wishes to compete with young birds, even though he 
prefers the same style of wattle we do, should also keep some of the soft-eyed sort in order to 
produce his winning young birds. If he selects these with judgment, and especially if he can get 
small birds with thick beaks, he is almost sure to succeed, since all fanciers admire small Barbs, 
if only well-developed in head and wattle points in proportion to their size, which these soft- 
wattled ones generally are. A very large bird, indeed, even if really fine in head, looks coarse 
by the side of such, and on the whole a rather small bird is preferred by all who can get them 
good enough ; and while, as we before said, we would discard no size, but judge by proportion, 
we would give the size of a common Flying Tumbler as the happy medium which all might seek 
