JAPANESE AVICULTURE 



The successes of Japanese horticulture, in the 

 forms of wonderful effects in landscape garden- 

 ing in a small space, trees of immemorial age 

 dwarfed to a size suitable for window-boxes, and 

 glorious chrysanthemums, are known to every 

 one ; but the equal success of this wonderful 

 people in the culture of birds is not by any 

 means so familiar to the world at large. The 

 best-known results of their pains bestowed in 

 this direction are two breeds of fowls, the 

 Japanese bantams and the celebrated long- 

 tailed fowls. The Japanese bantams have been 

 known in England for a long time, and are not 

 at all uncommon ; as the photograph shows, 

 their most striking peculiarities are extremely 

 short legs and, in the cocks at all events, very 

 large combs. They are usually black or white, 

 or a mixture of the two colours, white with a 

 black tail being very commonly seen. This 

 coloration, however, does not represent a 

 triumph of breeders in the localisation of colour, 

 as has been stated, for black-tailed white fowls 

 represent a very common and spontaneous varia- 

 tion, frequently seen wherever fowls are allowed 



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