is too presumptuous in the beginner
to try for all these points. The great judge above quoted says, "there are
some young fanciers who are over-covetous, who go for all the above five
properties at once; they have their reward by getting nothing." We thus see
that breeding even fancy pigeons is no simple art: we may smile at the
solemnity of these precepts, but he who laughs will win no prizes.

What methodical selection has effected for our animals is sufficiently
proved, as already remarked, by our Exhibitions. So greatly were the sheep
belonging to some of the earlier breeders, such as Bakewell and Lord
Western, changed, that many persons could not be persuaded that they had
not been crossed. Our pigs, as Mr. Corringham remarks,[460] during the last
twenty years have undergone, through rigorous selection together with
crossing, a complete metamorphosis. The first exhibition for poultry was
held in the Zoological Gardens in 1845; and the improvement effected since
that time has been great. As Mr. Baily, the great judge, remarked to me, it
was formerly ordered that the comb of the Spanish cock should be upright,
and in four or five years all good birds had upright combs; it was ordered
that the Polish cock should have no comb or wattles, and now a bird thus
furnished would be at once disqualified; beards were ordered, and out of
fifty-seven pens lately (1860) exhibited at the Crystal Palace, all had
beards. So it has been in many other cases. But in all cases the judges
order only what is occasionally produced and what can be improved and
rendered constant by selection. The steady increase of weight during the
last few years in our {199} fowls, turkeys, ducks, and geese is notorious;
"six-pound ducks are now common, whereas four pounds was formerly the
average." As the actual time required to make a change has not often been
recorded, it may be worth mentioning that it took Mr. Wicking thirteen
years to put a clean white head on an almond tumbler's body, "a triumph,"
says another fancier, "of which he may be justly proud."[461]

Mr. Tollet, of Betley Hall, selected cows, and especially bulls, descended
from good milkers, for the sole purpose of improving his cattle for the
production of cheese; he steadily tested the milk with the lactometer, and
in eight years he increased, as I was informed by him, the product in the
proportion of four to three. Here is a curious case[462] of steady but slow
progress, with the end not