The belief that the chief domestic races are descended from several wild stocks no doubt has arisen from the apparent improbability of such great modifications of structure having been effected since man first domesticated the rock-pigeon. Nor am I surprised at any degree of hesitation in admitting their common { 204} origin: formerly, when I went into my aviaries and watched such birds as pouters, carriers, barbs, fantails, and short-faced tumblers, &c., I could not persuade myself that they had all descended from the same wild stock, and that man had consequently in one sense created these remarkable modifications. Therefore I have argued the question of their origin at great, and, as some will think, superfluous length.
Finally, in favour of the belief that all the races are descended from a single stock, we have in _Columba livia_ a still existing and widely distributed species, which can be and has been domesticated in various countries. This species agrees in most points of structure and in all its habits of life, as well as occasionally in every detail of plumage, with the several domestic races. It breeds freely with them, and produces fertile offspring. It varies in a state of nature,[345] and still more so when semi-domesticated, as shown by comparing the Sierra Leone pigeons with those of India, or with those which apparently have run wild in Madeira. It has undergone a still greater amount of variation in the case of the numerous toy-pigeons, which no one supposes to be descended from distinct species; yet some of these toy-pigeons have transmitted their character truly for centuries. Why, then, should we hesitate to believe in that greater amount of variation which is necessary for the production of the eleven chief races? It should be borne in mind that in two of the most strongly-marked races, namely, carriers and short-faced tumblers, the extreme forms can be connected with the parent-species by graduated differences not greater than those which may be observed between the dovecot-pigeons inhabiting different countries, or between the various kinds of toy-pigeons,--gradations which must certainly be attributed to variation.