Selective breeding of pigeons began in India, as the records seem to show, more than two thousand years ago. Though other animals have been brought to domestication at much earlier times, this appears to have been the first of them to be subjected to deliberate efforts on the part of their masters, which were intended to bring about in a methodical way certain changes in their forms and habits. The most curious part of this great endeavor which has been applied to breeding pigeons is found in the fact that the ends sought have no utility, but afford satisfaction from the point of view of pure diversion or the gratification of taste. We are well accustomed to the action of such motives upon our flowering plants of the garden, but the pigeon is the only animal where fancy has labored for thousands of years for its gratification. The breeders of pigeons from remote antiquity to the present day appear to have had no definite purpose in all their pains. They have taken the chance variations in form and habit and endeavored to extend these sports of nature by a careful system of mating those in which the singular features were most evident. Thus the fan-tail breed has been developed until the creatures display their unornamental tail feathers with all the dignity with which a peacock shows his marvellous decorations. The pouters have in some unaccountable way learned to take air into their crop; and the habit has been developed by selection until the bird destroys all trace of his original shapeliness, though he seems to take pride in his diseased appearance. The tumbler, probably derived from some ancestor afflicted with a disease of an epileptic character, manages to go through his convulsions in the air without serious consequences and apparently with some pleasure to himself. There are over one hundred less conspicuous varieties, of which only one deserves notice, and this for the reason that it has some possible utility to man and is now much attended to. This is known as the carrier pigeon. [Illustration: The Giant Crowned Pigeon of India]