s have
suspected to be distinct from _C. livia_. I have examined numerous
specimens collected by Mr. E. V. Harcourt and Mr. Mason. They are
rather smaller than the rock-pigeon from the Shetland Islands, and
their beaks are plainly thinner; but the thickness of the beak varied
in the several specimens. In plumage there is remarkable diversity;
some specimens are identical in every feather (I speak after actual
comparison) with the rock-pigeon of the Shetland Islands; others are
chequered, like _C. affinis_ from the cliffs of England, but generally
to a greater degree, being almost black over the whole back; others are
identical with the so-called _C. intermedia_ of India in the degree of
blueness of the croup; whilst others have this part very pale or very
dark blue, and are likewise chequered. So much variability raises a
strong suspicion that these birds are domestic pigeons which have
become feral.

{185}

From these facts it can hardly be doubted that _C. livia_, _affinis_,
_intermedia_, and the forms marked with an interrogation by Bonaparte,
ought all to be included under a single species. But it is quite
immaterial whether or not they are thus ranked, and whether some one of
these forms or all are the progenitors of the various domestic kinds,
as far as any light is thus thrown on the differences between the more
strongly-marked races. That common dovecot-pigeons, which are kept in
various parts of the world, are descended from one or from several of
the above-mentioned wild varieties of _C. livia_, no one who compares
them will doubt. But before making a few remarks on dovecot-pigeons, it
should be stated that the wild rock-pigeon has been found easy to tame
in several countries. We have seen that Colonel King at Hythe stocked
his dovecot more than twenty years ago with young wild birds taken at
the Orkney Islands, and since this time they have greatly multiplied.
The accurate Macgillivray[330] asserts that he completely tamed a wild
rock-pigeon in the Hebrides; and several accounts are on record of
these pigeons having bred in dovecots in the Shetland Islands. In
India, as Captain Hutton informs me, the wild rock-pigeon is easily
tamed, and breeds readily with the domestic kind; and Mr. Blyth[331]
asserts that wild birds come frequently to the dovecots and mingle
freely