Ornithological and Other Oddities 



The much more remarkable long-tailed breed 

 has also been long known outside Japan, but 

 it is not commonly kept, owing no doubt to the 

 attention required to keep the cocks in good 

 feather. Fowls the length of whose tails runs 

 into yards cannot be allowed to run loose unless 

 the said tails are tied up, or they soon find them- 

 selves tethered to surrounding objects by these 

 extravagant appendages. In general appear- 

 ance this breed closely resembles the old English 

 fighting game, although some specimens have 

 small lumpy combs instead of " single " ones. 

 As in game, also, the colour is very variable, 

 and different names are employed by Japanese 

 fanciers to designate the various colours, just as 

 game-breeders talk of "piles," " duckwings," and 

 so forth. Of the two cocks of the breed shown 

 in the case of domestic birds in the entrance hall 

 at the Natural History Museum at South Ken- 

 sington, one is of the black-breasted red type, 

 the wild jungle-fowl colour, and the other a 

 "duckwing," in which shades of yellow or white 

 replace the red. Mr. J. T. Cunningham has paid 

 special attention to these birds, with a view to 

 discovering the method by which the extreme 

 elongation of the tail-coverts, centre tail-feathers, 

 and long hackles of the lower part of the back 

 is produced. His experiments, published in the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1903, 



