twenty-two specimens have their feet too short, on an
average by a little above the tenth of an inch (viz. .107); and five
specimens have their feet on an average a very little too long, namely,
by .07 of an inch. But some of these latter and exceptional cases can
be explained; for instance, with pouters the legs and feet are selected
for length, and thus any natural tendency to a diminution in the length
of the feet will have been counteracted. In the swallow and barb, when
the calculation was made on any standard of comparison excepting the
one above used (viz. length of body from base of beak to oil-gland),
the feet were found to be too small.

In the second table we have eight birds, with their beaks much longer
than in the rock-pigeon, both actually and proportionally with the size
of body, and their feet are in an equally marked manner longer, namely,
in proportion, on an average by .29 of an inch. I should here state
that in Table I. there are a few partial exceptions to the beak being
proportionally shorter than in the rock-pigeon: thus the beak of the
English frill-back is just perceptibly longer, and that of the Bussorah
carrier of the same length or slightly longer, than in the rock-pigeon.
The beaks of spots, swallows, and laughers are only a very little
shorter, or of the same proportional length, but slenderer.
Nevertheless, these two tables, taken conjointly, indicate pretty
plainly some kind of correlation between the length of the beak and the
size of the feet. Breeders of cattle and horses believe that there is
an analogous connection between the length of the limbs and head; they
assert that a race-horse with the head of a dray-horse, or a {174}
greyhound with the head of a bulldog, would be a monstrous production.
As fancy pigeons are generally kept in small aviaries, and are
abundantly supplied with food, they must walk about much less than the
wild rock-pigeon; and it may be admitted as highly probable that the
reduction in the size of the feet in the twenty-two birds in the first
table has been caused by disuse,[312] and that this reduction has acted
by correlation on the beaks of the great majority of the birds in Table
I. When, on the other hand, the beak has been much elongated by the
continued selection of successive slight increments of length, the feet
by corr