means.

out being able to point out the time, the locality, or the We surely cannot be condemned for professing utter scepticism in such an unsupported theory, and a disbelief in so unattested a history. Other sceptics have expressed their doubts on far weightier matters, with much more conclusive testimony to allay those doubts.

Secondly, in the absence of these requisite particulars from the upholders of the transmutative theory of creation, we are led to search among the older ornithologists for what can be found to illustrate the point. We do not there light upon any mention of the sudden appearance of new forms in the ancient Dovecotes.

Aldrovandi (the volume to which we refer bears date 1637) speaks of several of the Fancy Pigeons, not as new, or produced by breeding, but as peregrinas, foreign introductions, and points out the traditional source from whence some of them were obtained. The Jacobines, "which are called culcellata, monachinæ, and at Ferrara, Sorella, or Nuns," he styles the Columba Cypria, or Dove of Cyprus. Another sort is the Columba Cretensis, or Cretan Pigeon; and there are, besides, the Persian and the Turkish. That the ancients were not acquainted with so many varieties as ourselves is to be imagined, from their scanty geographical knowledge and limited foreign intercourse. Here is the amount of Aldrovandi's information: "But whether M. Varro, Aristotle, and the other ancients, were acquainted with the species of Pigeons which our times now furnish, I not only do not doubt about, but am not even led to believe it, although I well know that the ancient Romans had an insane passion for Pigeons, as I have before related from Pliny. Now-a-days, such a diver

CHAP. III. WHAT FORMER ORNITHOLOGISTS TELL US. 83

sity of Pigeons is found in Europe, and principally, as I hear, with the Belgæ, and, among these, with the Dutch, that I could scarcely credit what I was told by a man who in other respects is most trustworthy. I also remember that this nation, if any, takes an extravagant delight in Pigeons, and therefore keeps as many sorts as possible. For that gentleman told me that, besides the common domestic and Rock Pigeons, of which they had besides an immense number, there was a certain sort generally twice the size of the common dove-house kind, with bristly, that is feathered feet, which, while it is flying, and while it is cooing, swells out its crop into an immense tumour; the larger they display it in their flight, the better bred they are pronounced to be. That kind is called kroppers, that is, large-throated Pigeons, with which name they also come to us, for they are sometimes brought even to Italy. Ornithologus records that he observed Pigeons at Venice, which were almost equal to Hens in size; but his belief that they are the produce of tamed Ring Doves of the largest size, is in my judgment entirely wrong, for Ring Doves are never tamed. But whether those, which that gentleman said were kept in Holland, be the same with the Campanian Pigeons of Pliny, who writes that the largest are bred in Campania, I dare not affirm, although meanwhile I would not in the least deny. Bellonius certainly is of his opinion, and asserts that those are mistaken who suppose that Pliny and the other ancients were unacquainted with them."

The intelligent reader, who can bring to this subject a mind unprejudiced by previous statements and opinions, and who can, as he would be advised by an impartial judge, banish from his thoughts whatever he

84

THE READER WILL SUM UP THE EVIDENCE. [CHAP. III.

may have heard out of court, will, when he has read the foregoing remarks, perhaps be led to inquire whether the ideas current amongst the great majority of naturalists be not a clever, plausible, and well-expressed hypothesis, rather than a series of facts which we may admit without sure and unmistakable evidence for them. The evidence is wanting: the steps by which so wonderful a change in the form and habits of the same creature have been made, cannot be shown; and we may be allowed, without offence, to hesitate before we give in our adherence to the grand theory, that a gradual change is going on in the nature and condition of all animated creatures.

We would wish to speak of Temminck and his contemporaries with all due respect. Natural science owes them much; they performed well the difficult task of arranging and describing the existing forms which were offered to their study. Without this arrangement and classification, as far as it proceeded, their followers could have little hope of further advancing science. They performed a great work, and we ought to be most thankful to them for it. But that is no reason why we should set up Temminck, or Buffon, or Lamarck, or Blumenbach, as idols to be blindly worshipped, as was Aristotle of yore, and push aside as profane and heretical any suspicion which will intrude itself, that some of their conclusions, on a most mysterious and difficult question, may possibly have been hasty, or even incorrect;-a question, too, for information respecting which they confessedly relied upon other and less acute persons, and which they really had not time and leisure, amidst their many herculean tasks, to investigate for themselves. Temminck at least indicates, by many ex

CHAP. III.]

SCHEME OF ARRANGEMENT.

85

pressions which he casually lets fall, that had he pursued such an inquiry personally, he would have been more slow in putting forth those views, which we have ventured to discuss, of the derivation of all our Fancy Pigeons from the Columba livia, or Rock Dove.

The reader shall now have our scheme of arrangement:

I. Pigeons which are found in the domestic state only :—

II. Pigeons which are found both in a domestic and

III. Pigeons not capable of true domestication:

FANTAILS; their powers.-Effects of crossing.-Accident to one.-Pigeon Paon.-The lean poet of Cos.-Runts.-Pigeon mondains.-Comparison of eggs and weights.-Synonyms of Runts.-Runts at sea.-Rodney's bantam.-Peculiarities of Runts.-Runts in Italy.-Effects of crossing.-Trumpeters.-Archangel Pigeons.-Nuns.-Jacobines.-Columbarian distinctions.-Supposed caricature.-Turbits.-Temminck's ideas.-Owls.-Progress of the young.-Rapid growth.-Barbs.-Tumblers.-Their performance in the air.-Feats of wing.The Almond.-Peculiarity of form.-Learning to tumble.-Baldpates.-Helmets.-Powters and Croppers.-Their carriage, flight, and colouring.-Defects and remedies.-Crosses.-Carriers.-Castle of the birds.-How they find their way.-Phrenological hypothesis.-Carriers in Turkey.-Sir John Ross's birds. -Explanation.-Antwerp Carriers.-De Beranger.-English Carriers.-Oriental origin.-Lace and Frizzled Pigeons.-Eggs and young of the Columbidæ. -Quarrels and attachments.-Mating.-Love of home.-Food.-Merits of the Runts.-Etymology of the Trumpeter.

FANTAILS are by no means the miserable degraded monsters that many writers would induce us to believe