Or, secondly, that each breed, even the purest, has within a dozen or, at most, within a rating of generations, been crossed by the rock-pigeon: I say inside a dozen or twenty generations, for we all know of no fact countenancing the idea that the baby ever reverts to some one ancestor, removed by a larger variety of generations. The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and typically (as I’ve discovered with pigeons) extremely uniform, and every thing appears simple sufficient; but when these mongrels are crossed one with one other for several generations, hardly two of them shall be alike, and then the extreme problem, or somewhat utter hopelessness, of the task becomes obvious. And when a cross has been made, the closest selection is much more indispensable even than in unusual instances. I have saved each breed which I may purchase or acquire, and have been most kindly favoured with skins from several quarters of the world, extra particularly by the Hon. W. Elliot from India, and by the Hon. C. Murray from Persia.

But when we evaluate the dray-horse and race-horse, the dromedary and camel, the varied breeds of sheep fitted both for cultivated land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one breed good for one goal, and that of one other breed for another function; after we examine the many breeds of canines, every good for man in very different ways; once we examine the sport-cock, so pertinacious in battle, with other breeds so little quarrelsome, with “everlasting layers” which never desire to sit, and with the bantam so small and elegant; after we examine the host of agricultural, culinary, orchard, and flower-backyard races of plants, most useful to man at completely different seasons and for different purposes, or so stunning in his eyes, we should, I think, look further than to mere variability. One circumstance has struck me a lot; particularly, that all the breeders of the various home animals and the cultivators of plants, with whom I have ever conversed, or whose treatises I’ve read, are firmly satisfied that the several breeds to which every has attended, are descended from so many aboriginally distinct species. These two distinct circumstances are often confounded in treatises on inheritance.

Many treatises in numerous languages have been published on pigeons, and a few of them are essential, as being of considerable antiquity. Youatt, who was in all probability better acquainted with the works of agriculturalists than almost another individual, and who was himself a very good judge of an animal, speaks of the principle of choice as “that which allows the agriculturist, not solely to switch the character of his flock, however to alter it altogether. It is the magician’s wand, by means of which he could summon into life no matter kind and mould he pleases.” Lord Somerville, talking of what breeders have completed for sheep, says:-“It would appear as if they had chalked out upon a wall a type good in itself, and then had given it existence.” That almost all skilful breeder, Sir John Sebright, used to say, with respect to pigeons, that “he would produce any given feather in three years, but it might take him six years to acquire head and beak.” In Saxony the significance of the precept of selection in regard to merino sheep is so absolutely recognised, that men follow it as a commerce: the sheep are placed on a desk and are studied, like a picture by a connoisseur; this is done thrice at intervals of months, and the sheep are each time marked and classed, in order that the perfect might finally be chosen for breeding.

We shall then, additionally, see how it is that the breeds so often have a considerably monstrous character. The rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, and has a white rump (the Indian sub-species, C. intermedia of Strickland, having it bluish); the tail has a terminal dark bar, with the bases of the outer feathers externally edged with white; the wings have two black bars; some semi-home breeds and some apparently truly wild breeds have, apart from the 2 black bars, the wings chequered with black. Moreover, the a number of above-named domesticated breeds have been transported to all components of the world, and, due to this fact, some of them will need to have been carried again again into their native country; but not one has ever change into wild or feral, though the dovecot-pigeon, which is the rock-pigeon in a very barely altered state, has grow to be feral in a number of places. Moreover, I don’t consider that any ornithologist would place the English provider, the short-confronted tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in the same genus; extra especially as in every of these breeds a number of actually-inherited sub-breeds, or species as he may need called them, might be proven him. Moreover, when two birds belonging to two distinct breeds are crossed, neither of which is blue or has any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt instantly to accumulate these characters; for instance, I crossed some uniformly white fantails with some uniformly black barbs, and so they produced mottled brown and black birds; these I again crossed collectively, and one grandchild of the pure white fantail and pure black barb was of as beautiful a blue color, with the white rump, double black wing-bar, and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon!