CEYLON JUNGLE-FOWL 177 



black edcres to the feathers as in the hen grey jungle-fowl, but 

 irregularly mottled and intermixed with brown. Her comb is 

 particularly small even for a wild hen's, and her face feathered 

 like a partridge's, not bare as in the hen of the mainland jungle- 

 fowl. 



Young cocks can be distinguished from hens by being more 

 reddish on the brown upper parts and having only black and 

 i)rown below, with no white. 



The voice of this jungle-fowl is quite as distinct from that 

 of the two mainland birds as his plumage is, if the words 

 "George Joyce" or "John Joyce," the renderings given of it, 

 are at all correct. A bird in the London Zoo, believed to be 

 a hybrid Ceylon common fowl, crowed in three syllables " cock- 

 a-doo." 



Hybrids between the jungle-fowl and tame poultry are liable 

 to occur, as the wild bird sometimes crosses with village hens, 

 being able to overcome their consorts ; so the characteristic 

 points of yellow-patched comb and glazed lower plumage should 

 be borne in mind in determining the characteristics of a genuine 

 bird. 



Many tame cocks of a red colour — if not most, in places 

 where poultry breed anyhow — have reddish-brown instead of 

 black breasts, but on examination it will be seen that the 

 feathering here is ordinary, not glazed like that of the upper 

 parts, so that there is no reason to believe that such birds 

 have a cross of the Ceylon wild fowl. Similarly, the grey domestic 

 fowls, which are also common, are never marked in detail like the 

 grey Sonnerat cock, nor have they his peculiar pointed feathering. 



Hybrids with the Ceylon jungle-fowl and common fowl, by 

 the way, have been proved fertile, with one of the parents at 

 least. 



In Ceylon this bird is very generally distributed in all jungly 

 portions, but favours low rather than high ground in the north, 

 and in the south is scarcer and more a bird of the hills. It likes 

 a dry soil and scrub-jungle, especially of thorn and bamboo. The 

 cocks are far more often seen than the hens, though no doubt the 

 inconspicuousness of the latter has a good deal to do with this ; 

 but in any case they are shyer in disposition. More than one 

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