What, then, are we to conclude from this tendency in all the chief domestic races, both when purely bred and more especially when intercrossed, to produce offspring of a blue colour, with the same characteristic marks, varying in the same manner, as in Columbia livia? If we admit that these races are all descended from C. livia, no breeder will doubt that the occasional appearance of blue birds thus characterised is accounted for on the well-known principle of "throwing back" or reversion. Why crossing should give so strong a tendency to reversion, we do not with certainty know; but abundant evidence of this fact will be given in the following chapters. It is probable that I might have bred even for a century pure black Barbs, Spots, Nuns, white Fantails, Trumpeters, etc., without obtaining a single blue or barred bird; yet by crossing these breeds I reared in the first and second generation, during the course of only three or four years, a considerable number of young birds, more or less plainly coloured blue, and with most of the characteristic marks. When black and white, or black and red birds, are crossed, it would appear that a slight tendency exists in both parents to produce blue offspring, and that this, when combined, overpowers the separate tendency in either parent to produce black, or white, or red offspring.
If we reject the belief that all the races of the pigeon are the modified descendants of C. livia, and suppose that they are descended from several aboriginal stocks, then we must choose between the three following assumptions: firstly, that at least eight or nine species formerly existed which were aboriginally coloured in various ways, but have since varied in exactly the same manner so as to assume the colouring of C. livia; but this assumption throws not the least light on the appearance of such colours and marks when the races are crossed. Or secondly, we may assume that the aboriginal species were all coloured blue, and had the wing-bars and other characteristic marks of C. livia,--a supposition which is highly improbable, as besides this one species no existing member of the Columbidae presents these combined characters; and it would not be possible to find any other instance of several species identical in plumage, yet as different in important points of structure as are Pouters, Fantails, Carriers, Tumblers, etc. Or lastly, we may assume that all the races, whether descended from C. livia or from several aboriginal species, although they have been bred with so much care and are so highly valued by fanciers, have all been crossed within a dozen or score of generations with C. livia, and have thus acquired their tendency to produce blue birds with the several characteristic marks. I have said that it must be assumed that each race has been crossed with C. livia within a dozen, or, at the utmost, within a score of generations; for there is no reason to believe that crossed offspring ever revert to one of their ancestors when removed by a greater number of generations. In a breed which has been crossed only once, the tendency to reversion will naturally become less and less in the succeeding generations, as in each there will be less and less of the blood of the foreign breed; but when there has been no cross with a distinct breed, and there is a tendency in both parents to revert to some long-lost character, this tendency, for all that we can see to the contrary, may be transmitted undiminished for an indefinite number of generations. These two distinct cases of reversion are often confounded together by those who have written on inheritance.
Considering, on the one hand, the improbability of the three assumptions which have just been discussed, and, on the other hand, how simply the facts are explained on the principle of reversion, we may conclude that the occasional appearance in all the races, both when purely bred and more especially when crossed, of blue birds, sometimes chequered, with double wing-bars, with white or blue croups, with a bar at the end of the tail, and with the outer tail-feathers edged with white, affords an argument of the greatest weight in favour of the view that all are descended from Columba livia, including under this name the three or four wild varieties or sub-species before enumerated.