Premium Services      Rock Dove (Columba livia) Color-printed and hand-retouched engraving with etching after Mme Knip (Antoinette Pauline de Courcelles) From: Mme Knip, Les pigeons [1st ed.; first published 1808] (Paris, 1811) NYPL, Rare Books Division, Stuart Collection

Common street pigeons are descended from Rock Doves, and have substituted urban structures for the ancestral rocky cliffs. The Rock Dove is also the forebear of aristocrats such as homing pigeons or racers, Tumblers or Rollers (who somersault in the air), pigeons with distinctive voices (Trumpeters and Laughers), and birds bred for beautiful or unusual feather patterns and colors.

Mme Knip, a gifted disciple of the illustrious French bird painter Jacques Barraband, portrayed this elegant bird, and many others, in Les pigeons. C. J. Temminck, a leading naturalist of the period, wrote the text, and both he and Mme Knip claimed author credit for this and the second (1838–43) editions of Les pigeons. Scholars still debate the details of this bitter controversy, leaning most recently toward the opinion that Mme Knip did indeed "steal" the authorship.