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Show 200 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. CnAP. VI. The last case which I will give is the most curious. I paired a mongrel female barb-fantail with a mongrel male barb-spot; neither of which mongrels had the least blue a?out. them. Let it be remembered that blue barbs are excessively rare.; tb~t spo t s, as h a. been a< ll·e- ady stated , were l)erfectly• ch•a ract• eriz• ed m the year 1G7G, and breed perfectly true; tlus likewise IS the r.ase with white fantails, so much so that I have never heard of white fantails throwing any other colour. Nevertheless the offi ·prino- from the above two mongrels was of .exactly the same blue tir~t as that of the wild rock-pigeon from the Shetland Islands over tho whole back and wings ; the double black wingbars were equally conspicuous; the tail was exactly alike in all its characters, and the croup was pure white; the bead, however, was tinted with a shade of red, evidently derived from the spot, and was of a paler blue than in the rock-pigeon, as was the stomach. So that two black barbs, a red spot., and a white fantail, as the four purely-bred grandparents, produced a bird of the same general blue colour, together with every characteristic mark, as in the wild Columba livia. ·with respect to crossed breeds frequently producing blno birds chcquered with black, and resembling in all respects both the dovecot-pigeon and the chequered wild variety of the rockpigeon, the statement before referred to by MM. Boitard and Corbic would almost suffice; but I will give three instances of the appearance of such birds from crosses in which one alone of the parents or great-grandparents was blue, but not chequered. I crossed a male blue turbit with a snow-white trumpeter, and the following year with a dark, leaden-brown, short--faced tumbler; the offspring from the first cross were as perfectly chequered as any dovecot-pigeon; and from the second, so mbch so as to be nearly as black as the most darkly chequered rock-pigeon from Madeira. Another bird, whose greatgrandparents were a white trumpeter, a white fantail, a white red-spot, a rod runt, and a blue pouter, was slaty-blue and chcquered exactly like a dovecot-pigeon. I may here wings, but tho whole tail and tail-coverts wore dark bluish-grey . Another mongrel, whose four gmndparonts wore a red runt, while trump tor, white fU.ntail, and the same blue pouter, wus pw·e white all over, except the tail and upper tail-coverts, which wore palo fawn, und except the faint ~t trace of double wingbars of the same pale fawu tint. CHAP. VI. THEIR REVERSION IN COLOUR. 201 add a remark made to me by Mr. Wicking, who has had: more experience than any other person in England in breeding pigeons of various colours: namely, that when a blue, or a blue and chequered bird, having black wing-bars, once appears in any race and is allowed to breed, these characters are so strongly transmitted that it is extremely difficult to eradicate them. What, then, ar.o we to conclude from this tendency in all the . chief domestic races, both when purely bred and more especially when intercrossed, to produce offspring of a blue colour, with the same characteristic marks, varying in the same manner, as in Columba livia? If we admit that these races have all descended from 0. livia, no breeder will doubt that the occasional uppearance of blue birds thus characterised is accounted for on the well-known principle of" throwing back" or reversion. Why crossing should give so strong a tendency to reversion, we do not with certainty know; but abundant evidence of this fact will be given in the following chapters. It is probable that I might have bred even "for a century pure black barbs, spots, nuns, white fantails, trumpeters, &c., without obtaining a single blue or barred bird; yet by crossing these breeds I reared in the first and second generation, during the course of only-three or four years, a considerable number of young birds, more or less plainly coloured blue, and with most of the characteristic marks. When black. a nd white, or black and. red birds' are crossed, it would appear that a slight tendency exists in both parents to produce blue offspring, and that this, when combined, overpowers the separate tendency in either parent to produce black, or white, or red offspring. If we _reject the belief that all the races of the pigeon are the modrfied descendants of 0. livia, and suppose that they are descended from several aboriginal stocks, then we must choose between the three following assumptions: firstly, that at least eight or nine species formerly existed which were aboriginally coloured in Vi:lrious ways, but have since varied in so ~~actly the. same manner as to assume the colouring of 0. hvw; but th1s assumption throws not the least light on the appearance of such colours and marks when the races are crossed. Or secondly, we may assume that the aboriginal species |