Page:Pigeons - their structure, varieties, habits, and management (IA b28107901).pdf/41

 on the hypothesis of the multiple origin of our pigeons, it must be assumed that at least seven or eight species were so thoroughly domesticated in ancient times by half-civilized man, as to be quite prolific under confinement.

"An argument, as it deems to me, of great weight, and applicable in several other cases, is, that the above-specified breeds, though agreeing generally in constitution, habits, voice, colouring, and in most parts of their structure, with the wild Rock Pigeon, yet are certainly highly abnormal in other parts of their structure, we may look in vain throughout the whole great family of Columbidæ for a beak like that of the English Carrier, or that of the Short-fuced Tumbler, or Larb; for reversed feathers like those of the Jacobin; for a crop like that of the Pouter; for tail-feathers like those of the Fantail. Hence it must be assumed, not only that half-civilized man suceeded in thoroughly domesticating scveral species, but that he intentionally or by chance picked out extraordinarily abnormal species; and, further, that these very species have since all become extinct or unknown. So many strange contingencies seem to me improbable in the highest degree.

"Some facts in regard to the colouring of pigeons well deserve consideration. The Rock Pigeon is of a slaty-blue, and has a white rump (the Indian sub-species, C. intermedia of Strickland, having it bluish); the tail has a terminal dark bar, with the bases of the outer feathers externally edged with white; the wings have two black bars; some semi-domestic breeds and some apparently truly wild breeds have, besides the two black bars, the wings chequered with black. These several marks do not occur together in any other species of the whole family. Now, in every one of the domestic breeds, taking thoroughly well-bred birds, all the above marks, even to the white edging of the outer tail-feathers, sometimes concur perfectly developed.

"Moreover, when two birds belonging to two distinct breeds are crossed, neither of which is blue or has any of the above-specificd marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt suddenly to acquire these characters. To give one instance out of several which I have observed: I crossed some white Fantails, which breed very true, with some black Barbs, and it so happens that blue varieties of Barbs are so rare that I never heard of an instance in Englaud,—and the mongrels were black, brown, and mottled. I also crossed a Barb with a Spot, which is a white bird with a red tail and red spot on the forehead, and which notoriously breeds very true. The mongrels were dusky and mottled.

"I then crossed one of the mongrel Barb-Fantails with a mongrel Barb-Spot, and they produced a bird of as beautiful a blue colour, with the white croup (rump), double black wing-bars, and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild Rock Pigeon! We can understand these facts, on the well-known principle of reversion to ancestral characters, if all the domestic breeds have descended from the Rock Pigeon. But if we deny this, we must make one of the two following highly improbable suppositions. Either, firstly, that all the several imagined aboriginal stocks were coloured and marked like the Rock Pigeon,