This group includes three Races, namely, Carriers, Runts, and Barbs,
which are manifestly allied to each other. Indeed, certain carriers and
runts pass into each other by such insensible gradations that an
arbitrary line has to be drawn between them. Carriers also graduate
through foreign breeds into the rock-pigeon. Yet, if well-characterised
Carriers and Barbs (see figs 19 and 20) had existed as wild species, no
ornithologist would have placed them in the same genus with each other
or with the rock-pigeon. This group may, as a general rule, be
recognised by the beak being long, with the skin over the nostrils
swollen and often carunculated or wattled, and with that round the eyes
bare and likewise carunculated. The mouth is very wide, and the feet
are large. Nevertheless the Barb, which must be classed in this same
group, has a very short beak, and some runts have very little bare skin
round their eyes.
Race II.—Carriers.
(Türkische Tauben; pigeons turcs, dragons.)
_Beak elongated, narrow, pointed; eyes surrounded by much naked,
generally carunculated, skin; neck and body elongated._
_Sub-race I. The English Carrier._—This is a fine bird, of large size,
close feathered, generally dark-coloured, with an elongated neck. The
beak is attenuated and of wonderful length: in one specimen it was 1·4
inch in length from the feathered base to the tip; therefore nearly
twice as long as that of the rock-pigeon, which measured only ·77.
Whenever I compare proportionally any part in the carrier and
rock-pigeon, I take the length of the body from the base of the beak to
the end of the tail as the standard of comparison; and according to
this standard, the beak in one Carrier was nearly half an inch longer
than in the rock-pigeon. The upper mandible is often slightly arched.
The tongue is very long. The development of the carunculated skin or
wattle round the eyes, over the nostrils, and on the lower mandible, is
prodigious. The eyelids, measured longitudinally, were in some
specimens exactly twice as long as in the rock-pigeon. The external
orifice or furrow of the nostrils was also twice as long. The open
mouth in its widest part was in one case ·75 of an inch in width,
whereas in the rock-pigeon it is only about ·4 of an inch. This great
width of mouth is shown in the skeleton by the reflexed edges of the
ramus of the lower jaw. The head is flat on the summit and narrow
between the orbits. The feet are large and coarse; the length, as
measured from end of hind toe to end of middle toe (without the claws),
was in two specimens 2·6 inches; and this, proportionally with the
rock-pigeon, is an excess of nearly a quarter of an inch. One very fine
Carrier measured 31½ inches from tip to tip of wing. Birds of this
sub-race are too valuable to be flown as carriers.
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