2 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



that is a very favourite pastime among more 

 or less uncivilized races, and always has been. 

 At the same time, a friend of mine who has 

 travelled in New Guinea told me that he had 

 found one chief there who kept fowls simply 

 as pets, though they were unknown in most 

 places in the island, so that Caesar's early 

 Britons may have simply been the first of the 

 poultry-fanciers. 



As a matter of fact, the real home of our 

 fowls is India and Burma, and there are any 

 amount of wild fowls jungle-fowl people call 

 them there still. They are quite tropical 

 birds, for you find them chiefly in the hot 

 plains, and they do not go high up in the 

 mountains where you find a temperate clim- 

 ate ; and, as there are not many birds suitable 

 for shooting in the plains of India, except in 

 the winter when wild ducks and snipe come in 

 from the north, sportsmen find the jungle- 

 fowl very useful indeed. 



In fact, they go out regularly to shoot 

 jungle-fowl as we shoot pheasants here, and 

 the birds give quite as much sport, for they fly 

 just like pheasants do, and are about the same 

 size ; only it seems to newcomers rather like 



