400 GUINEA FOWL 
(for there is apparently no evidence of its domestication being con- 
tinuous from the time of the Romans) be assigned more than 
roughly to that of the African discoveries of the Portuguese.’ It 
does not seem to have been commonly known till the middle of the 
16th century, when Caius sent a description and figure, with the 
name of Gallus Mauritanus, to Gesner, who published both in his 
Paralipomena in 1555, and in the same year Belon also gave a notice 
and woodcut under the name of Poulle de la Guinée; but while the 
former authors properly referred their bird to the ancient Meleagris, 
the latter confounded the Meleagris and the TURKEY. 
The ordinary Guinea Fowl of our poultry-yards is the Numida 
meleagris of ornithologists, and is too common a bird to need 
description. The chief or only changes which domestication seems 
to have induced in its appearance are a tendency to albinism 
generally shewn in the plumage of its lower parts, and frequently, 
though not always, the conversion of the colour of its legs and feet 
from dark greyish-brown to bright orange. That the home of this 
species is West Africa from the Gambia” to the Gaboon is certain, 
but its range in the interior is quite unknown. It appears to have 
been imported early into the Cape Verd Islands, where, as also in 
some of the Greater Antilles and in Ascension, it has run wild. 
Representing the species in South Africa we have NV. coronata, which 
is very numerous from the Cape Colony to Ovampoland, and JN. 
cornuta of Drs. Finsch and Hartlaub, which replaces it in the west 
as far as the Zambesi. Madagascar also has its peculiar species, 
distinguishable by its red crown, the WN. mitrata of Pallas, a name 
which has often been misapplied to the last. This bird has been 
introduced to Rodriguez, where it is now found wild. Abyssinia 
is inhabited by another species, the N. ptilorhyncha,? which differs 
from all the foregoing by the absence of any red colouring about 
the head. Very different from all of them, and the finest species 
known, is the JV. vulturina of Zanzibar, conspicuous by the bright 
blue in its plumage, the hackles that adorn the lower part of its 
neck, and its long tail. By some writers it is thought to form a 
separate genus, dcryllium. All these Guinea Fowls are charac- 
terized by having the crown bare of feathers and elevated into a 
bony “helmet,” but there is another group (to which the name 
1 Edwards, writing about 1760 (Gleanings, ii. p. 269), says that ‘‘Guiney 
Hens, which were shewn as rarities when I was a boy, are now become a common 
domestick Fowl in England.” 
2 Specimens from the Gambia are said to ‘be smaller, and have been described 
as distinct under the name of N. rendalii. 
3 Mr. Darwin (Anim. and Pl. wnder Domestication, i. p. 294) gives this as the 
original stock of our modern domestic birds, but herein I venture to think he has 
been misled. As before observed, it may possibly have been the true pedeaypis 
of the Greeks. 
