eds of the Domestic Pigeon._--Believing that it is always best
to study some special group, I have, after deliberation, taken up domestic
pigeons. I have kept every breed which I could purchase or obtain, and have
been most kindly favoured with skins from several quarters of the world,
more especially by the Hon. W. Elliot from India, and by the Hon. C. Murray
from Persia. Many treatises in different languages have been published on
pigeons, and some of them are very important, as being of {21} considerable
antiquity. I have 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 wonderful 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 {22} carried so e