I crossed black Barbs (of two excellent strains) with purely-bred,
snow-white Fantails. The mongrels were generally quite black, with a
few of the primary wing and tail feathers white: others were dark
reddish-brown, and others snow-white: none had a trace of wing-bars or
of the white croup. I then paired together two of these mongrels,
namely, a brown and black bird, and their offspring displayed
wing-bars, faint, but of a darker brown than the rest of body. In a
second brood from the same parents a brown bird was produced, with
several white feathers confined to the croup.
I crossed a male dun Dragon belonging to a family which had been
dun- coloured without wing-bars during several generations, with a
uniform red Barb (bred from two black Barbs); and the offspring
presented decided but faint traces of wing-bars. I crossed a
uniform red male Runt with a White trumpeter; and the offspring had
a slaty-blue tail with a bar at the end, and with the outer
feathers edged with white. I also crossed a female black and white
chequered Trumpeter (of a different strain from the last) with a
male Almond-tumbler, neither of which exhibited a trace of blue, or
of the white croup, or of the bar at end of tail: nor is it
probable that the progenitors of these two birds had for many
generations exhibited any of these characters, for I have never
even heard of a blue Trumpeter in this country, and my
Almond-tumbler was purely bred; yet the tail of this mongrel was
bluish, with a broad black bar at the end, and the croup was
perfectly white. It may be observed in several of these cases, that
the tail first shows a tendency to become by reversion blue; and
this fact of the persistency of colour in the tail and
tail-coverts[29] will surprise no one who has attended to the
crossing of pigeons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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