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Updated: June 12, 2025
Moreover, when two birds belonging to two distinct breeds are crossed, neither of which is blue or has any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt suddenly to acquire these characters; for instance, I crossed some uniformly white fantails with some uniformly black barbs, and they produced mottled brown and black birds; these I again crossed together, and one grandchild of the pure white fantail and pure black barb was of as beautiful a blue colour, with the white rump, double black wing-bar, and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon!
Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary, in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport?
There is, of course, some limit to the number of feathers of which a tail useful for flight can consist, and in the fantail we have probably reached that limit. Many birds have the oesophagus or the skin of the neck more or less dilatable, but in no known bird is it so dilatable as in the pouter pigeon. Here again the possible limit, compatible with a healthy existence, has probably been reached.
He did let her go, smoothly and brilliantly, so that before long she was at her top speed, around fifteen knots an hour. I was familiar with every detail of the Belle Helène, and now I looked in both the generating plant and the storage batteries, so that four thousand candle-power of electric light blazed over her from bow to fantail.
Fantail in the morning, having taken in all sail: the chestnut curls have disappeared, and two limp bands of brown hair border her lean, sallow face; you see before you an ascetic, a nun, a woman worn by mortifications, of a sad yellow aspect, drinking salts at the well: a vision quite different from that rapturous one of the previous night's ball-room.
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.
There was everything that one wants in a farm, a pond with ducks; a haystack half cut, so that one might jump about on it; straw ricks on stone posts; cowsheds smelling so warm and friendly, with swallows darting in and out of the doorway to their nests in the roof; stables with gentle horses who ate the green stuff you gave them without biting you; guinea-pigs, the property of Master Walter Pescod, who was a weekly boarder at Cirencester; fantail pigeons; bantams; ferrets, very frightening to everyone but Kink, who knew just how to hold them; and a turnip-slicer, which Gregory turned for some time, munching turnip all the while.
Moreover, I do not believe that any ornithologist would in this case place the English carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in the same genus; more especially as in each of these breeds several truly-inherited sub-breeds, or species, as he would call them, could be shown him.
But in a domestic bird like the fantail where Natural Selection does not come into play, the tail-feathers could hardly be limited by "utility for flight," yet two more tail-feathers could certainly exist in a fancy breed if "utility for flight" were the only obstacle.
The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a sheen of silver.
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