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I have already pointed out to you very briefly the different habits of the breeds of Pigeons, all of which depend upon their physiological peculiarities, as the peculiar habit of tumbling, in the Tumbler the peculiarities of flight, in the "homing" birds, the strange habit of spreading out the tail, and walking in a peculiar fashion, in the Fantail, and, lastly, the habit of blowing out the gullet, so characteristic of the Pouter.
They run along the branches and dart and tumble through the air in fearless chase of invisible flies and moths. All the time they keep unfolding and furling their rounded tails, spreading them out and waving them and closing them suddenly, just as the Cuban girls manage their fans. In fact, the redstarts are the tiny fantail pigeons of the forest.
Here, Tuesdays and Saturdays, we used regularly to take our places, Jemmy and Jemimarann sitting in front; me, behind: but as my dear wife used to wear a large fantail gauze hat with ostrich feathers, birds-of-paradise, artificial flowers, and tags of muslin or satin, scattered all over it, I'm blest if she didn't fill the whole of the front of the box; and it was only by jumping and dodging, three or four times in the course of the night, that I could manage to get a sight of the actors.
The birds appear to be quite proud of their power of swelling and puffing themselves out in this way; and I think it is about as droll a sight as you can well see to look at a cage full of these pigeons puffing and blowing themselves out in this ridiculous manner. The third kind I mentioned the Fantail is a small bird, with exceedingly small legs and a very small beak.
I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and left on the sand. Then Otoo arrived Otoo the manhandler.
Take the Carrier and the Fantail, for instance, and let them represent the Horse and the Ass in the case of distinct species; then you have, as the result of their breeding, the Carrier-Fantail mongrel, we will say the male and female mongrel, and, as far as we know, these two when crossed would not be less fertile than the original cross, or than Carrier with Carrier.
There was an open space to cross on the road to the water, and, after a careful lookout for enemies, the mother gathered the little things under the shadow of her spread fantail and kept off all danger of sunstroke until they reached the brier thicket by the stream. Here a cottontail rabbit leaped out and gave them a great scare. But the flag of truce he carried behind was enough.
To serve a useful purpose is the great economy of things, to point a warning, at the cost of one's heart's blood, to England's foes and traitors to the plotter in Munster as well as the safer conspirator of the Parks might content even a greater ambition than that which animates the gentle bosom of a fantail.
No man would ever try to make a fantail, till he saw a pigeon with a tail developed in some slight degree in an unusual manner, or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a crop of somewhat unusual size; and the more abnormal or unusual any character was when it first appeared, the more likely it would be to catch his attention.
Out rushed the servants, out poured the gents of the hunt, and on trotted poor me, digging into the donkey, and everybody dying with laughter at me. Just as I got up to the door, a horse came galloping up, and passed me; a man jumped down, and taking off a fantail hat, came up, very gravely, to help me down. "Squire," says he, "how came you by that there hanimal?
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