carunculated skin about the head, and this is accompanied by greatly
elongated eyelids, very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a
wide gape of mouth. The short-faced tumbler has a beak in outline
almost like that of a finch; and the common tumbler has the singular
and strictly inherited habit of flying at a great height in a compact
flock, and tumbling in the air head over heels. The runt is a bird of
great size, with long, massive beak and large feet; some of the
sub-breeds of runts have very long necks, others very long wings and
tails, others singularly short tails. The barb is allied to the
carrier, but, instead of a very long beak, has a very short and very
broad one. The pouter has a much elongated body, wings, and legs; and
its enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, may well
excite astonishment and even laughter. The turbit has a very short and
conical beak, with a line of reversed feathers down the breast; and it
has the habit of continually expanding slightly the upper part of the
oesophagus. The Jacobin has the feathers so much reversed along the
back of the neck that they form a hood, and it has, proportionally to
its size, much elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and
laugher, as their names express, utter a very different coo from the
other breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty tail-feathers,
instead of twelve or fourteen, the normal number in all members of the
great pigeon family; and these feathers are kept expanded, and are
carried so erect that in good birds the head and tail
touch; the oil-gland is quite aborted. Several other less distinct
breeds might have been specified.
In the skeletons of the several breeds, the development of the bones of
the face in length and breadth and curvature differs enormously. The
shape, as well as the breadth and length of the ramus of the lower jaw,
varies in a highly remarkable manner. The number of the caudal and
sacral vertebr vary; as does the number of the ribs, together with
their relative breadth and the presence of processes. The size and
shape of the apertures in the sternum are highly variable; so is the
degree of divergence and relative size of the two arms of the furcula.
The proportional width of the gape of mouth, the proportional length of
the eyelids, of the orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not always
in strict correlation with the length of beak), the size of the crop
and of the upper part of the oesophagus; the development and abortion
of the oil-gland; the number of the primary wing and caudal feathers;
the relative length of wing and tail to each other and to the body; the
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