From these historical details we see that nearly all the chief domestic races existed before the year 1600. Some remarkable only for colour appear to have been identical with our present breeds, some were nearly the same, some considerably different, and some have since become extinct. Several breeds, such as Finnikins and Turners, the swallow-tailed pigeon of Bechstein and the Carmelite, seem to have originated and to have disappeared within this same period. Any one now visiting a well-stocked English aviary would certainly pick out as the most distinct kinds, the massive Runt, the Carrier with its wonderfully elongated beak and great wattles, the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; the Pouter with shorter legs, and in every way less remarkable--that is, if Aldrovandi's Pouter resembled the old German kind; the Fantail would have been far less singular in appearance, and would have had much fewer feathers in its tail; he would have seen excellent flying Tumblers, but he would in vain have looked for the marvellous short-faced breeds; he would have seen birds allied to Barbs, but it is extremely doubtful whether he would have met with our actual Barbs; and lastly, he would have found Carriers with beaks and wattle incomparably less developed than in our English Carriers. He might have classed most of the breeds in the same groups as at present; but the differences between the groups were then far less strongly pronounced than at present. In short, the several breeds had at this early period not diverged in so great a degree as now from their aboriginal common parent, the wild rock-pigeon. MANNER OF FORMATION OF THE CHIEF RACES.