does not look to the distant future, or speculate on the final result of
the slow accumulation during many generations of successive slight changes:
he is content if he possesses a good stock, and more than content if he can
beat his rivals. The fancier in the time of Aldrovandi, when in the year
1600 he admired his own jacobins, pouters, or carriers, never reflected
what their descendants in the year 1860 would become; he would have been
astonished could he have seen our jacobins, our improved English carriers,
and our pouters; he would probably have denied that they were the
descendants of his own once admired stock, and he would perhaps not have
valued them, for no other reason, as was written in 1765, "than because
they were not like what used to be thought good when he was in the fancy."
No one will attribute the lengthened beak of the {215} carrier, the
shortened beak of the short-faced tumbler, the lengthened leg of the
pouter, the more perfectly-enclosed hood of the jacobin, &c.,--changes
effected since the time of Aldrovandi, or even since a much later
period,--to the direct and immediate action of the conditions of life. For
these several races have been modified in various and even in directly
opposite ways, though kept under the same climate and treated in all
respects in as nearly uniform a manner as possible. Each slight change in
the length or shortness of the beak, in the length of leg, &c., has no
doubt been indirectly and remotely caused by some change in the conditions
to which the bird has been subjected, but we must attribute the final
result, as is manifest in those cases of which we have any historical
record, to the continued selection and accumulation of many slight
successive variations.

The action of unconscious selection, as far as pigeons are concerned,
depends on a universal principle in human nature, namely, on our rivalry,
and desire to outdo our neighbours. We see this in every fleeting fashion,
even in our dress, and it leads the fancier to endeavour to exaggerate
every peculiarity in his breeds. A great authority on pigeons[359] says,
"Fanciers do not and will not admire a medium standard, that is, half and
half, which is neither here nor there, but admire extremes." After
remarking that the fancier of short-faced beard tumblers wishes for a very
short beak, and that the fancier of long-faced beard tumblers wishes for a
very long beak, he says, with respect to one of intermediate leng