tour. We doubt much whether any plans of treatment or inter-breeding would ever produce a carrier or horseman, so singularly specific are they in their characters, and of this we are sure, that if the breed be once extinct, no arts will ever consummate its renewal. Other

varieties are far more easily accounted for,but this, of ancient lineage, descended from a remote line of oriental ancestry, has continued in distinctness to the present day. True, it has been interbred with baser strains by fanciers; but more or less pure, its distinctive characters yet survive, often in high perfection. We may say the same, with some reservation, respecting the barb,—a black pigeon with an occipital crest and a naked circle of scarlet skin round the eyes.

But before we attempt to give a sketch, (and a sketch only, for we are not of the fancy,) of the principal varieties of the domestic pigeon, it may be as well to turn our attention to their assumed origin, the rock pigeon, and give a brief history of its general habits and economy.

THE ROCK PIGEON (Columba livia).-Le Biset and Le Rocheraye of the French writers, Piccione de Rocca, etc., of the Italians, Colom

men of the ancient British, is a bird of wide dispersion. It is a native of the British islands, breeding upon the sea-side rocks. It abounds in the Orkneys and Hebrides, along the rocky shores of Wales, and various other places on our coasts, not excepting old towers, and ruins a few miles inland, as we ourselves can personally testify. Throughout Europe, the same observations apply; along the coasts of France, Spain, and Italy, it frequents in multitudes the same localities. The rocky

islands of the Mediterranean are its favourite abodes; it was known of old in Greece; it abounds in northern Africa, and along the Asiatic shores far into India. And here we cannot but advert to a passage in the Zool. Proc. 1832, respecting a pigeon noticed by colonel Sykes in his account of the birds of the Dukhun. The passage is as follows: "Columba Enas, Linn. Stock-pigeon, parwa of the Mahrattas. The most common bird in the Dukhun, congregating in flocks of scores, and a constant inhabitant of every old dilapidated building. Colonel Sykes saw the same species on board ship on the voyage to England brought from China. Irides, orange, etc. The Dukhun bird differs from the European

species in the bill being black,* instead of pale red, in the utter want of white in the quills; the want of white in the tail-feathers; and in the legs being brown† instead of black. As these differences are permanent, they might justify a specific name being applied to the Dukhun pigeon."

Now we hesitate not to say that this bird was not the Stock-dove (C. Enas) nor any variety of it, but the Rock-dove (C. Livia) or a closely allied species (if not mere variety), and this might be presumed from the fact alone of its inhabiting old dilapidated buildings. Selby speaking of the Rock-dove says, "Although this species seems to have fallen frequently under the notice of our ornithologists (as may be gathered from their descriptions and the localities they have given to it,) yet it has always been attended by the original supposition of this and the preceding species (stock-dove) being identical. In form and size they very nearly agree, the rock-dove being, perhaps, rather more slender. The predominant shades of each are also much

* Bill blackish brown. Selby, art. Rock-dove.

Legs pale purplish red. Selby, art. Rock-dove. Bright cochineal red in the stock-dove.-Idem.

the same; the principal variations consisting in the colour of the rump, which, in the stockdove, is invariably bluish grey, but in the rockdove generally white, in the two distinct bands of bars (of black) crossing the wings of the latter bird, and in the colour of the breast and belly, which, in the former bird (stockdove) is more of a purplish red. The dissimilarity of their habits, however, marks even more strongly the specific difference between them, than the proofs drawn from the plumage, the stock-dove being a constant inhabitant of the woods, and frequently the interior of the country;* but the species under consideration is in its wild state always met with inhabiting rocky places, and these principally on the sea-coast."

White, in his natural history of Selborne, clearly distinguishes between the stock-dove which frequents the beech-woods, and the rock-dove. "For my own part (he says in a letter to Pennant) I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon for many reasons. In the first place, the wild stockdove is manifestly larger than the common *It is migratory,

house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove would not, one would think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed, but would often break out among its descendants. But what is worth a hundred arguments is the instance you give in sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves in Carnarvonshire, which, though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed upon to inhabit their cote for any time; but as soon as they begin to breed betake themselves to the fastnesses of Armshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory."

Wild pigeons, as we have often noticed, not unfrequently take up their abode in the holes and fissures of old ruins, church towers or steeples, or similar places, and that at a considerable distance inland, nay, even remote from the sea. But whether these are true rock-doves, or house-pigeons returned to a state of independence, or a mixture of both, it is not always easy to determine. Great numbers frequent Canterbury cathedral: