Chap. I. 
DOMESTIC PIGEONS. 
21 
siderable antiquity. I liave associated with several 
eminent fanciers, and have been permitted to join two 
of the London Pigeon Clubs. The diversity of the 
breeds is something astonishing. Compare the English 
carrier and the short-faced tumbler, and see the won¬ 
derful difference in their beaks, entailing corresponding 
differences in their skulls. The carrier, more especially 
the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful 
development of the carunculated skin about the head, 
and this is accompanied by greatly elongated eyelids, 
very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a wide 
gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a beak 
in outline almost like that of a finch; and the common 
tumbler has the singular inherited habit of flying at 
a great height in a compact flock, and tumbling in the 
air head over heels. The runt is a bird of great size, 
with long, massive beak and large feet; some of the 
sub-breeds of runts have very long necks, others very 
long wings and tails, others singularly short tails. The 
barb is allied to the carrier, but, instead of a very long 
beak, has a very short and very broad one. The pouter 
has a much elongated body, wings, and legs; and its 
enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, 
may well excite astonishment and even laughter. The 
turbit has a very short and conical beak, with a line of 
reversed feathers down the breast; and it has the habit 
of continually expanding slightly the upper part of the 
oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much 
reversed along the back of the neck that they form 
a hood, and it has, proportionally to its size, much 
elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and 
laugher, as their names express, utter a very different 
coo from the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or 
even forty tail feathers, instead of twelve or fourteen, 
the normal number in all members of the great pigeon 
family ; and these feathers are kept expanded, and are 
