years in several quarters of the world; the earliest known record of
pigeons is in the fifth Aegyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.C., as was
pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius; but Mr. Birch informs me that
pigeons are given 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
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