n in a
bill of fare in the previous dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as we
hear from Pliny, immense prices were given for pigeons; "nay, they are
come to this pass, that they can reckon up their pedigree and race."
Pigeons were much valued by Akber Khan in India, about the year 1600;
never less than 20,000 pigeons were taken with the court. "The monarchs
of Iran and Turan sent him some very rare birds;" and, continues the
courtly historian, "His Majesty by crossing the breeds, which method
was never practised before, has improved them astonishingly." About
this same period the Dutch were as eager about pigeons as were the old
Romans. The paramount importance of these considerations in explaining
the immense amount of variation which pigeons have undergone, will be
obvious when we treat of Selection. We shall then, also, see how it is
that the breeds so often have a somewhat monstrous character. It is also
a most favourable circumstance for the production of distinct breeds,
that male and female pigeons can be easily mated for life; and thus
different breeds can be kept together in the same aviary.

I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some,
yet quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and
watched the several kinds, knowing well how true they bred, I felt fully
as much difficulty in believing that they could ever have descended
from a common parent, as any naturalist could in coming to a similar
conclusion in regard to the many species of finches, or other large
groups of birds, in nature. One circumstance has struck me much;
namely, that all the breeders of the various domestic animals and
the cultivators of plants, with whom I have ever conversed, or whose
treatises I have read, are firmly convinced that the several breeds
to which each has attended, are descended from so many aboriginally
distinct species. Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of Hereford
cattle, whether his cattle might not have descended from long horns, and
he will laugh you to scorn. I have never met a pigeon, or poultry, or
duck, or rabbit fancier, who was not fully convinced that each main
breed was descended from a distinct species. Van Mons, in his treatise
on pears and apples, shows how utterly he disbelieves that the several
sorts, for instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have
proceeded from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples
could be given. The explanati