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In nearly all farmyards in this country where the poultry are not carefully 

 looked after, and are allowed to breed as they like, one invariably sees a common 

 Red cock sometimes with a black breast, but in all cases with a distinct bar more 

 or less strongly marked on the wing, and hens of various shades of brown. 



This bar on the wing, like the double wing bar so strongly marked on the 

 Wild Rock Dove, Columba livia, and in the numerous varieties of its tame descend- 

 ants, seems to be the principal and permanent distinguishing mark that has come 

 down, through a long course of years, from the original stock of our domestic 

 poultry ; and so strongly does it reassert itself that I have remarked that in 

 instances where a Buff Cochin cock has been turned down in a farmyard with the 

 intention of improving and enlarging the breed of common farmyard poultry, yet 

 directly the descendants of this cross were allowed to breed among themselves 

 what has been the result ? First, the bar on the wing made its appearance in a 

 greater or less degree. Next, the cooks became red and the hens brown, and both 

 showed only a slight trace of their Cochin ancestor in their fluffy sterns, and some- 

 what shorter tails. Gradually even these evidences of Cochin blood disappeared, 

 and in a very few generations the cocks relapsed into the common Red, and the 

 hens into the common Brown, birds of the country. 



The result is also precisely the same where a Black Polish cock with a large 

 crest (a breed of some antiquity) has been mated with r:()mmon poultry, and their 

 progeny allowed to breed together. The colour of the Polish cock is the first to 

 disappear, getting redder and redder, then the crest gets smaller and smaller in 

 each successive generation, until it gradually dies out altogether and no trace of it 

 remains, except a few feathers on the head, almost an apology for a crest, which 

 very occasionally re-appear from time to time. 



When we consider the enormous care and length of time it must have taken 

 to produce birds of so essentially different types as Cochins and Polish, and when 

 we see how quickly these types disappear altogether when interbred with common 

 poultry, I think this and the results above mentioned may be taken as some 

 evidence of at least the colour of the original stock of our domestic poultry. 



With regard to comb, I have never among the numbers of game fowls I have 

 bred during the past twenty-five years ever seen a single instance of anything but 

 a single serrated comb, and even when game is crossed with the Malay the pea 

 comb of the latter bird entirelj' disappears after the fifth generation. On the 

 other hand, I have often seen the single comb appear among such carefully bred 

 birds as Sebrights and Black Bantams, both of which varieties have exceedingly 

 well defined double combs. 



I have also occasionally observed it in the various varieties of the Hamburg 

 fowl, all of which have very large double combs. 



Although the origin of the domestic cock is lost in the obscurity of ages, yet 

 it may possibly be gleaned from the above experiences that originally the dom.estic 

 cock sprang from a bird somewhat resembling the Black-red game cock in colour, 

 although probably with some slight mottling on the breast, and with a greater 

 metallic brilliancy of plumage, with a red eye, small wattles, and single serrated 

 comb, dark or dark blue coloured legs of medium length, with a rather drooping 



