From these facts it can hardly be doubted that _C. livia_, _affinis_, _intermedia_, and the forms marked with an interrogation by Bonaparte, ought all to be included under a single species. But it is quite immaterial whether or not they are thus ranked, and whether some one of these forms or all are the progenitors of the various domestic kinds, as far as any light is thus thrown on the differences between the more strongly-marked races. That common dovecot-pigeons, which are kept in various parts of the world, are descended from one or from several of the above-mentioned wild varieties of _C. livia_, no one who compares them will doubt. But before making a few remarks on dovecot-pigeons, it should be stated that the wild rock-pigeon has been found easy to tame in several countries. We have seen that Colonel King at Hythe stocked his dovecot more than twenty years ago with young wild birds taken at the Orkney Islands, and since this time they have greatly multiplied. The accurate Macgillivray[330] asserts that he completely tamed a wild rock-pigeon in the Hebrides; and several accounts are on record of these pigeons having bred in dovecots in the Shetland Islands. In India, as Captain Hutton informs me, the wild rock-pigeon is easily tamed, and breeds readily with the domestic kind; and Mr. Blyth[331] asserts that wild birds come frequently to the dovecots and mingle freely with their inhabitants. In the ancient 'Ayeen Akbery' it is written that, if a few wild pigeons be taken, "they are speedily joined by a thousand others of their kind."