The Carrier Pigeon is easily distinguished from the other varieties by a broad circle of naked white skin round the eyes, by the large fleshy wattle at the base of its bill, and by its dark blue or blackish colour. It would be as fruitless as unnecessary to attempt to describe all the varieties of the Tame Pigeon; for human art has so much altered the colour and figure of this bird, that pigeon-fanciers, by pairing a male and female of different sorts, can, as they express it, “breed them to a feather.” Hence we have the various names of Carriers, Tumblers, Jacobins, Croppers, Pouters, Bunts, Turbits, Shakers, Fantails, Owls, Nuns, &c., all of which may, at first, have accidentally varied from the Rockdove, and these have been further improved by crossing, food, and climate. An actual post system, in which pigeons were the messengers, was established by the Sultan Noureddin Mahmoud, which lasted about a century, and ceased in 1258, when Bagdad fell into the hands of the Moguls. [Illustration: THE TURTLE DOVE. (_Columba turtur._)] “Go, beautiful and gentle Dove, And greet the morning ray; For lo! the sun shines bright above, And the rain is pass’d away.” BOWLES. THIS Dove brings to the heart and mind the most pleasing recollections; its name is nearly synonymous with faithfulness and unvariable affection. The male or female is so much attached to its respective mate that it is said, perhaps with more poetry than truth, that if one die the other will never survive; however, the author of these observations was an eye-witness to the death of a female Turtle Dove, who was unfortunately killed by a spaniel, in the absence of the male; the disconsolate survivor, after having in vain searched everywhere for his mate, came and mournfully perched upon the wonted trough, waiting patiently for her to repair thither in order to get food; but, after two days of unavailing expectation, he, by spontaneous abstinence, pined and died on the place. Such examples are not common; and we believe that, when not domesticated, the appearance of another female, in the time of coupling, sets at defiance all natural propensity to constancy, and puts an end to the much-famed disconsolate widowhood. Their general colour is a bluish grey; the breast and neck of a whitish purple, with a ringlet of beautiful white feathers with black edges about the sides of the neck. Nothing can express the sensation which is excited in a feeling mind when the tender and sweetly plaintive notes of the Turtle Dove breathe from the grove on a beautiful spring evening: