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 vertebrae vary; as does the number of the ribs, together
with their relative breadth and the presence of processes.
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