34 OUR DOMESTIC FOWLS. 



there are either two species or two very strongly 

 marked varieties. In the vallej^s, at 2,000 

 feet above the sea, Sonnerat's species is found, 

 slender, standing high on the legs, and with 

 the yellow cartilaginous spots on the feathers, 

 even in the female. In the belts of woods on 

 the sides of mountains at 4,000 feet above the 

 sea there is a short-legged variety ; the male 

 has a great deal of red in his plumage, which 

 Sonnerat's has not ; the female is of a reddish 

 brown colour, and is without cartilaginous 

 spots at all. In fact, the female of this variety 

 is the G alius Stanleyii of Mr. Gray's "Illus- 

 trations," eggs exactly like those of the 

 domestic fowl in form and colour, but less in 

 size. The wild hen would appear to sit on a 

 much smaller number of eggs than the domes- 

 tic, as colonel Sykes shot a hen upon her nest, 

 in which were only three eggs, and the process 

 of incubation had evidently commenced some 

 days.* In the craw and stomach of many 

 birds, nothing whatever was found excepting 

 the seeds of a stone-like hardness, called Job's 

 tears, {Coix harbata,) Irides brownish deep 



* This might have been an accidental circumstance, and a 

 single instance is no proof that tlie wild hen sits on fewer eggs, 

 or rears a less numerous progeny, than hsr domestic relative. 



