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THE DOMESTIC FOWL.

"I might be infinite should I prosecute at large all that might be said of this bird, or write a full, exact, and particular history of it. If any reader desires to know more of it, let him consult Aldrovandus, whose design was to omit nothing in his History which was either known to himself or had been published by others."—WILLUGHBY, p. 156.

IT has been the fate of Aldrovandi both to be plundered most unmercifully, and to be disrespectfully spoken of by the majority of his plunderers, on the subject of Poultry at least; that is, by those who have robbed him at second hand, because they were either too indolent or too unlearned to labour through a heavy Latin folio. But if he did sometimes take the wrong turn in hewing his way through the dense unexplored forest that opposed his progress, it is not magnanimous in us to sneer at him, who have the "Penny Cyclopædia," the Zoological Society, and the British Museum to refer to. His works are a monument of skill and enterprise; and as an Encyclopædia of Natural History, as far as it had advanced at the close of the sixteenth Century, are of great value to those who can make the misapprehensions, as well as the correct conclusions of their predecessors, subservient to the advancement of science. It is now nearly two hundred and fifty years since "Aldrovandus his Book" was published, and, in the meanwhile, much fresh information has been collected, much error swept away; but on many important points, particularly those respecting theory, we are still no wiser than our forefathers.

What is the earliest date of Poultry-keeping? Nobody knows. My own belief is, that it is coeval with the keeping of sheep by Abel and the tilling of the ground by Cain-a supposition which cannot be far from probability if there is any foundation for the legend that Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, took a surname from the Cock.

Indeed, it would be to him that Western Europe stands indebted for a stock of Fowls from the Ark itself. For, it is supposed by the erudite, and shown by at least probable arguments, that the descendants of Gomer settled in the northern parts of Asia Minor, and then spread into the Cimmerian Bosphorus and the adjacent regions, and that from them the numerous tribes of the Gauls, Germans, Celts, and Cimbrians descended. It is true that there is no mention of Fowls by name in the Old Testament, except a doubtful allusion in the Vulgate translation of the Book of Proverbs (xxx. 31), which is lost in the authorised version; the Hebrew word translated "gallus in one place being rendered "greyhound" in the other: "Gallus succinctus lumbos; et aries: nec est rex, qui resistat ei:" a greyhound; (some think the war-horse was meant), "an he goat also; and a king, against whom there is no rising up." It will be seen that the Latin and the English by no means run parallel to each other. There is another equally disputable passage in Ecclesiastes, xii. 4. "And

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the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird (i. e. at Cock-crowing) and all the daughters of music shall be brought low." Both passages are quoted by the Rev. Mr. Pegge in his curious paper on Cockfighting, in the Archæologia, vol. iii. A still less certain reference occurs in the Book of Job, xxxviii. 36. “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts ? or who hath given understanding to the heart?" running thus in the Latin: "Quis posuit in visceribus sapientiam, vel quis dedit gallo intelligentiam?" which is commented on by St. Gregory, and the word "gallus" spiritually interpreted, as having reference to those earnest preachers who rouse men from the slumber of sin, and cry aloud that the night is far spent, the day is at hand.

The apparent omission of the name of the Domestic Fowl from the Old Testament may possibly have arisen from this cause, namely, that tending them would be the occupation of women, whose domestic employments are

less prominently brought forward by oriental writers than the active enterprises of men; and also, that the birds specially named there are the unclean birds, which are to be avoided, whereas those which may be eaten are classed in a lump as "clean." See Leviticus, xi. 13., and Deuteronomy, xiv. 11. "Of all clean birds ye shall eat. But these are they which ye shall not eat; the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the osprey," &c. Turtle-doves and young pigeons are only mentioned as objects of sacrifice, not as articles of food.

Aristotle, who wrote about 350 years before Christ, speaks of them as familiarly as a natural historian of the present day would. It is unnecessary more than to allude to the beautiful comparisons taken from them in the New Testament. The Roman authors of the commencement of the Christian era record that they were classed into such a number of distinct varieties as could only have been the result of long cultivation. Whether we suppose that different breeds were collected and imported from different native stations, or assume that the differences of those breeds were the artificial result of domestication, whichever case we take, Domestic Fowls must have been held in familiar esteem for many, many ages before we have any clear record of them. Either supposition attaches to them a highly interesting and quite mysterious degree of antiquity. Even in our own country they appear to have existed at a time and in a state of society when we should least have expected to find them. "Britanniæ pars interior ab iis incolitur, quos natos in insulâ ipsà, memoriâ proditum dicunt. Leporem, et gallinam, et anserem gustare, fas non putant: hæc tamen alunt, animi voluptatisque causâ."-Cæsar de Bello Gallico, lib. v., cap. xii. inland parts of Britain are inhabited by those whom fame reports to be natives of the soil. . . . . . They think it unlawful to feed upon hares, pullets, or geese; yet they breed them up for their diversion and pleasure."-Duncan's Translation.

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Dr. Kidd, in his Bridgewater Treatise, doubts whether the Camel ever existed in a wild and independent state. We do not go quite so far as that in scepticism in the case of Fowls, but still believe that those who, at this epoch, hunt for Cocks and Hens of the same species as our tame ones, either on the Continent of Asia, or throughout the whole inhabited vast Indian Archipelago, will have undertaken but a fruitless search. For certain writers have been at great pains for some years past, with but little success, except in their own conceit, to pitch upon the wild origin of our Domestic Fowls. The first decided attempts appear to have been made by Sonnerat, and to have been followed up by succeeding French writers, whose errors are glaring, and in whose praise little can be said. Réaumur, whose writings are really philosophical and valuable, devoted his inquiries to more practical objects, but Sonnerat was merely a blind leader of the blind, if there is justice in the criticism of Mr. Swainson, who pronounces that "Sonnerat's works, (Paris, 1776 and 1778), although often cited by the French authors, are very poor; the descriptions vague, and the figures, particularly of the birds, below mediocrity." Buffon, who did not die till 1788, had therefore an opportunity of adopting Sonnerat's Jungle Fowl as the parent of Cocks and Hens, and his vivid imagination made him very likely to have adopted so apparently clear an account, ready telegraphed for his reception. But instead of that, he speaks hesitatingly and doubtfully of the derivation of our Domestic Fowls from Wild Cocks, and seems to despair of indicating their origin. He says, "Amidst the immense number of different breeds of the gallinaceous tribe, how shall we determine the original stock? So many circumstances have operated, so many accidents have concurred: the attention, and even the whim of man have so much multiplied the varieties, that it appears extremely difficult to trace them to their source.

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Those authors who, by a pleasant legerdemain, so easily transform one of the wild Indian Galli into a Barn

door Fowl, who put the Jungle Cock, the Bankiva Cock, or the Gigantic St. Jago (?)* bird under a bushel, hocus pocus a little, lift up the cover, and then exhibit a veritable Chanticleer-write as if they had only to catch a wild-bird in the woods, turn it into a court yard for a week or two, and make it straightway become as tame as a spaniel. On such a notion comment is now supererogatory. For a difficulty which speaks volumes, is, that those birds which have been pointed out as the most probable ancestors of the Domestic Fowl, do not appear to be more tameable than the Partridge or the Golden Pheasant; moreover, so remarkable an appendage as the horny expansion of the feather-stem, as seen in Sonnerat's Cock, would, according to what is generally supposed to take place, be increased rather than diminished and obliterated by domestication; and even if got rid of by any course of breeding for a few generations, would be sure ultimately, to reappear. Now, in some races of Fowls known only to the moderns, we observe feathered crests showing an affinity with the Lophophori, the Pea Fowl, and perhaps distantly with the Curassows; in others, certain Bantams, for instance, we find the feet and legs covered with feathers, indicating some approach to

* St. Jago, one of the Cape de Verd islands, may furnish wild Guinea Fowl, but scarcely wild Cocks. The "Gallus Giganteus," the great "St. Jago Fowl," is the offspring of an absurd misquotation from Marsden, which has run the round of most compilations. Jago, the native Sumatran or Malay word for a particular breed, has been mistaken for "St. Jago," the name for an island. Marsden was well acquainted with his subject, and there is nothing like referring to an original authority.

"There are in Sumatra the domestic Hen (ayam), some with black bones, and some of the sort we call Freezland or Negro fowls; Hen of the woods (ayam baroogo); the jago breed of fowls, which abound in the southern end of Sumatra, and western of Java, are remarkably large; I have seen a Cock peck off a common dining table: when fatigued, they sit down on the first joint of the leg, and are then taller than the common fowls. It is strange if the same country, Bantam, produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by that name." MARSDEN'S History of Sumatra, p. 98.

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