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CHAPTER XX. 
ORIENTAL FRILLED PIGEONS. 
As hinted in the last two chapters, the main stem represented by the Owl or Turbit type of 
pigeon has, in the hands of those Eastern fanciers who either formed it, or at least handed it down 
from immemorial antiquity, branched off still further into even more beautiful sub-varieties. These 
are broadly distinguished from the foregoing by the addition of what we may perhaps call “ feather” 
properties, using here the word “ feather” as distinguished from merely “colour,” and as implying 
marking of a more or less detailed character ; and in most cases, also, by the addition of grouse or 
leg-feather ; but all retaining the short, Owl-like head, the shape of body, and the frill. Most of 
these varieties, if not all, are of exquisite beauty, and many can remember yet the furore when the 
first really good Satinettes arrived in England, shortly followed by other sub-types. All of such 
birds that could be obtained were eagerly purchased, but too often disappointment followed in 
breeding them, the progeny being found to vary considerably. Hence many have ignorantly come 
to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a fixed type, and that because, for instance, a 
pair of good Satinettes did not breed, as they often will not, similar Satinettes, the Satinette itself 
was but a mere “sport,” and as such of no fixed value. 
But this has all arisen from a total ignorance of the real nature of the breeds ; and as we now 
believe for the first time, have opportunity to explain this, so we hope a better understanding on 
that point may extend the cultivation of these exquisite birds, which have all the properties of the 
Owls and Turbits, with added beauties of their own. To say nothing of the well-known fact, which 
surely ought to have been remembered, that even self-colours in pigeons are, to a great extent, 
variable and interchangeable, it must be clearly understood, as a simple embodiment of what will 
follow from an abler pen than ours, that the whole Satinette and Blondinette tribe, with their 
numerous offshoots, greatly resemble the Almond Tumbler, in being the result of the mingling in 
one bird of three colours ! The precise process by which this was accomplished no one now knows, 
any more than we know the precise history of the Tumbler ; but as in that case the black, 
white, yellow, and red, which usually are found each alone in some one pigeon, have somehow 
been infused into one breed, so have various colours, in still more beautiful, because more regular, 
forms, been mingled in the birds before us. In consequence, their breeding greatly resembles 
Tumbler-breeding ; and two exhibition match specimens are rarely so good a match for breeding 
as various colours. As in the Tumbler, one colour will show preponderance, which has to be 
checked by the infusion of others in greater strength ; and — still resembling the Tumbler — it is 
these accidental preponderances, now of one colour or marking, and now of another, which form 
sub-varieties answering to the Mottle, the Agate, or the Kite. 
Such then being the more beautiful of these birds, and such the general principles upon which 
only they can be successfully bred, we have now to come to details. Here we should despair, but 
that we have the help of the gentleman who introduced these beautiful birds into England, and 
who still knows more about them, their method of breeding, and the Eastern fanciers who produced 
