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Ptarmigan and Grouse; the Silky Fowl has a plumage akin to that of the Apteryx and the Cassowary; but in none do we see anything like the bony plates in the plumage of Sonnerat's Cock. A bird with this peculiarity, either in the hackle, or in the wing, after the fashion of the Bohemian Chatterer, would be the greatest curiosity that a London dealer could produce.

Still, our own Cocks and Hens must have had some progenitors, and if I may venture to offer an opinion, it is this; that the wild race, that which once ranged the primeval woods and jungles, unsubdued by man, is now extinct, for ever gone, with the Dodos and the Deinornithes. Such an idea quite agrees with what we now see going on in the world. At no very distantly future time, the Turkey will be in exactly the same position in which I am supposing our Cocks and Hens to be now placed. The race will continue to survive, only from having submitted itself to the dominion of Man. Wild Turkeys are becoming every year more and more scarce in America, and as population increases, and penetrates deeper into the wilds, till the whole face of the country is overspread, occupied, and cultivated, the Turkey in the New World must share the fate of the Bustard in England, and where shall we find it then, except under the same circumstances as we now see our Domestic Fowls ?

How long existing literature will endure it is impossible to speculate; but should it be swept clean away by any social convulsion, our descendants, two thousand years hence, will have as much difficulty in determining the origin of the Turkey, as we have in deciding upon that of the Cocks and Hens. At a later point of time than that predestined for the disappearance of the wild Turkey, but one equally inevitable, the last surviving specimens of the Emeu and the Kangaroo, will be such as shall be reared in captivity, for the gratification of the wealthy or the scientific. Man has the power of trampling underfoot, and sweeping every living thing before him in his progress; but in some cases, at least, he is likely, for his

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own sake, to rescue the most valuable part of the spoil from destruction, if it will only submit to be rescued, and not refuse to accept a continued existence on such conditions. A family of savages would soon consume and destroy a whole province full of wild Cocks and Hens, were it never so well stocked; but civilised Man can see his interest in their preservation, and it is lucky for Fowls that their destiny threw them in contact with the Caucasian race instead of Australian aborigines. But the increase of knowledge and humanity may even yet do something to extend a merciful and forbearing conduct towards existing animals. Had the Dodo survived to these days, it might perhaps have dated a renewed term of existence from the day that it was subjected to confinement in a menagerie. Now the utter destruction of the Dodo appears, if we think of it, to have occasioned a great loss to mankind: it might have proved a valuable addition to our live stock. It was a gallinaceous bird, covered with fine down. That its flesh was good is proved by the fact of the whole race having been eaten and consumed in so short a time, though there do seem to have been two opinions, some preferring Turtle to Dodo. Its weight (fifty pounds) made it of importance; its unwieldiness and inability to fly (being an avis, not a volucris) made it easy to confine. It was said to lay numerous eggs; but if it produced only two or three young in the year, it was at least as prolific as the Sheep. We do not find it stated what was the food of the Dodo. Its strong scratching feet, powerful digestion, thick neck, and enormous beak, seem to indicate that roots might be its main sustenance. Let us hope that the beautiful Honduras Turkey will not be permitted to be extirpated in like manner.

The size, inactivity, and sluggishness of such creatures as these are the main cause of the extinction they are undergoing as wild races; but the common Hen has one peculiar habit, which would alone ensure the destruction of her progeny in an unprotected state, in spite of all her

fruitfulness and her great maternal virtues. Her delight at having laid an egg, expressed by loud cackling, which is joined in by all her companions that are at hand, would, by itself, be sufficient to prevent much increase of her young. The Latin writers called the cry singultus, or sobbing, as if she had suffered pain; but the notice thus given of her delivery was equally public at that distance of time as now. How the squaws and their picaninnies would chuckle to have wild birds abounding around them, that not only produced an excellent egg every day, but told them where to find it! But without going into the wilderness, either east or west, what would become of the larger ground-nesting birds in England, the Water-hen, the Wild-duck (what has become of the Bustard ?), if they were not as silent and stealthy in depositing their eggs, and leading forth their young, as the Hen is noisy and obtrusive ? Even Le Vaillant's ape "Kees" could learn to listen for the cacklings of his master's Hens, and steal their eggs.

The habit which so large a bird as the Fowl has of retiring to roost by daylight, and composing itself to repose before it is hidden and protected by the shades of night, would also be a certain source of danger in a wild state. The craving hunter who wanted a meal, need not fatigue himself by a search during the noontide heats. He would have but to bear the pangs of appetite till evening approached, and then stealing with no great caution under the outstretched branches, he would find a ready prey distinctly apparent between himself and the ruddy glare of sunset.

No wild race could survive a few years of such facile, such tempting capture. Those who would reply by saying that when Cocks and Hens were wild they had not fallen into the imprudent fashion of roosting before dark, and cackling when they dropped an egg, beg the question which we are not disposed to grant them, unless they can positively establish their claim.

The antiquity which I thus assume for our existing race of Cocks and Hens may perhaps startle some readers;

but hear Professor Owen on other analogous cases - "It is probable that the Horse and the Ass are descendants of a species of pliocene antiquity in Europe. There is no anatomical character by which the present Wild Boar can be distinguished specifically from that which was contemporary with the Mammoth. All the species of European pliocene Bovidae came down to the historical period, and the Aurochs and Musk-ox still exist; but the one owes its preservation to special imperial protection, and the other has been driven, like the Rein-deer, to high northern latitudes. There is evidence that the great Bos primigenius, and the small Bos longifrons, which date, by fossils, from the time of the Mammoth, continued to exist in this island after it became inhabited by Man. The small short-horned pliocene Ox is most probably still preserved in the mountain varieties of our domestic cattle. The great Urus seems never to have been tamed;" note this; "but to have been finally extirpated in Scotland. Of the Cervine tribe, the Red-deer and the Roe-buck still exist in the mountainous districts of the north; but, like the Aurochs in Lithuania, by grace of special protective laws."-British Fossil Mammals and Birds, Introduction, p. xxxii.

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But if our domestic Fowls were thus early called into existence, where are their fossil remains to be found? The probabilities are against our finding them at all. We can hardly expect them in any oceanic deposit; and extremely rare," says Professor Owen, "are the remains of birds in the fresh-water deposits, or marine drift of the newer pliocene period, which so abound in Mammalian fossils. The light bodies of birds float long on the surface after death; and for one bird that becomes imbedded in the sediment at the bottom, perhaps ninetynine are devoured before decomposition has sufficiently advanced to allow the skeleton to sink."-Id. p. 557. It would probably be in their supposed original Asiatic home that any successful search would be made; but we ought not to be disappointed if none are discovered even

there. Dr. Buckland, in his Reliquiae Diluviance, mentions twenty-two localities of the remains of antediluvian animals, and in only three of them are relics of Birds found.

It certainly has long been thought that our domesticated creatures, beasts as well as birds, must necessarily be descended from some wild stock, which still exists in an untamed state. This petitio principii, this begging of the point at issue, has unquestionably led to wrong conclusions, and left a host of naturalists, particularly œconomical writers, planted in the midst of difficulties which are still unexplained. Where is the wild origin of the sheep, or of the goat, to be found? Some say here, some say there, some fix on this species, some on that, and the reader ends by "giving it up." But take the simple theory that many of our domestic animals are the survivors of extinct races, survivors because domesticable, of extirpated, because defenceless creatures, and the difficulties vanish, and become reconcileable with what we see around us. All those species which have of late become, or are likely soon to become extinct, disappear because they refuse to be subjugated by man; for example, the yet untamed Aurochs of Lithuania, which still survives only by virtue of strict protective laws enforced by the Emperor of Russia, and which has had all the time from the epoch of living Mammoths to the present day to become softened in disposition, but still refuses to hear the voice of the charmer. In some few sad instances, principally of birds, the work of extermination appears to have been completed before any fair experiment had been tried, as with the Dodo and the Kivi Kivi. Other species, on the contrary, as the Turkey, will probably long survive the utter disappearance of their wild progenitors, solely on account of having submitted with a good grace to the dominion of Man. One of these, the Cereopsis, seems likely to owe its rescue to the happy exertions of the Zoological Society, which thus becomes an ark of refuge amidst the flood of population.

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