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Show 180 DOMESTIC PIGEONS. CHAP. VI. CHAPTER VI. PIGEONS-continued. ON TTllJJ ABORIGINAL PARENT-STOCK OF TilE SEVERAL DOMESTIC RACES- HAJ3ITS OF LIFE - WILD RACES OF TJII!l ROCK-PIGEON - DOVECOT-PIGEONS - PROOFS OF 'l'liE DE CENT OF ~·rm SEVERAL RACES FROM COLU:MIJA LIVIA- FERTILITY OF TIIE RACES WHEN CROS ED- REVERSION 1'0 TIIE PLUMAGE OF l'lill WJU) ROCK-PIGEONCII\ CUMSTANCES FAVOUHA13J,EJ '1'0 'l'IIE FORMATION OF 'I'liE RACES- ANTIQUI'l'Y AND lliSTORY OF TilE PUINClPAL HACES -MANNER OF THEin 1'0R~IA1'ION- SELJWTJON -UNCONSCIOUS SELIW'fTON- CAHE TAKEN 13Y FANCillHS IN SELECTING l'IIEffi BIRDS- SLIOIITI,Y DIFFEREN'l' STUAlNS GHADUALLY CllANGJ~ INTO WELL-llfAHKED BREEDS - EXTINCTION OF INTERMEDIA'l'E FORMS - CElW'AIN BREEDS lillMAIN PERMANENT, Wll!LS'l' OTIIERS CHANGE- SUMMARY. TrrE differences described in the last chapter between the cloven chief domestic races and between individual birds of tho same race, would be of little significance, if they had not all descended from a single wild stock. 'l'he question of their orjgin js therefore of fundamental ini.portanco, and must be discussed at considerable length. No one will think this superfluous who considers the great amount of differenc~ between the races, who knows how ancient many of them are, and how truly they brood at the present day. Fanciers almost unanimously believe that the different races are descended from several wild stocks, whorcas most naturalists believe that all are descended from the Columba livia or rock-pigeon. Temminck1 has well observed, and Mr. Gould has made the same remark to me, that the aboriginal parent must have been a species which roosted and built its nest on rocks; and I may add that it must have been a social bird. For all the domestic races are highly social, and none are known to build or habitually to roost on trees. The awkward manner in which some pigeons, kept by me in a summe~-house near an old walnut-tree, occasionally aljghted on the barer branches, was 1 Temminck, 'Hist. Nat. Gen. des Pigeons,' &c., tom. i. p. 191. CuAP. VI. THEIR PARENT AGE. 181 evidont.2 N over.tboloss, Mr. R. Scot Skirving informs me that he often saw crowds of pigeons in Upper Egypt settling on the low trees, but not on the palms, in preference to the mud .hovels of the natives. In India Mr. Blyth3 has been assm·ed that the wild 0. livia, var. intermedia, sometimes roosts in trees. I may here give a curious instance of compulsion loading to changed habits: the banks of the Nile above lat. 28° 30' are perpendicular for a 1ong distance, so that when the river is full the pigeons cannot alight on the shore to drink, and Mr. Skirv.ing repeatedly saw whole flocks settle on the water, and drink whilst they floated down the stream. These flocks seen from a distance resembled flocks of gulls on the surface of the sea. If any domestic race had descended from a species which was not social, or which built its nest or roosted in trees,4 the sharp eyes of fan.ciers would assuredly have detected some vestige of so different an aboriginal habit. For we have reason to believe that aboriginal habits are long retained under domestication. Thus with the common ass we see signs of its original desert life in its strong dislike to cross the smallest stream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel, which has been domesticated from a very ancient period. Young pigs, though so tame, sometimes squat when frightened, and thus try to conceal them solves even on an op,en and bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even young fow Is, when the hen gives the danger-cry, 1·un away and try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants, in or~er that their mother may take flight, of which she has lost . the power. The musk-duck (JJendrooygna viduata) in its native 2 I have hoard through Sir C. Lyell from Miss Buckley, that some halt~bred carriers kept during many years near London regularly settled by day on some adjoining trees, and, after being disturbed in thc~r loft by their young being taken, roosted on them at night. 3 'Annals and Mng. of Nat. Hist.,' 2nd ser., vol. xx., 1857, p. 509 ; and in a late volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society. 4 In works written on the pigeon by fanciers I have sometimes observed the mistaken belief expressed that the species which naturo.lists call gi·oundpigcons (in contradistinction to arboreal pigeons) do not perch and build on trees. In these same works wild species resembling the chief domestic races arc often said to exist in various parta of the world, but such species are quite unknown to naturalists. |