POULTRY 15 



birds in the world, and we shall never see 

 anything better in feathers. 



Solomon, by the way, had them, so the 

 Jews were acquainted with peacocks long 

 before the Greeks were, but no news of his 

 birds seem to have reached the West. Pea- 

 cocks were never forgotten, and were kept 

 and cared for somewhere or another from 

 Roman times onwards ; but guinea-fowls, 

 which the Romans and Greeks also knew, 

 seem to have disappeared altogether during 

 the Middle Ages, for an Englishman writing 

 two hundred years ago says that when he was 

 a boy they were shown as a curiosity, though* 

 they had since become common poultry. 

 The wild guinea-fowl is found in West Africa, 

 and, like the wild fowl, has much the same 

 habits as the pheasant. The ordinary dark 

 ones, covered all over with little white spots, 

 are very like the wild bird still, but there are 

 several sorts of wild guinea-fowls which are 

 quite ordinary game - birds all over Africa, 

 and the Romans seem to have kept another 

 sort besides the one we know ; ours has red 

 wattles, and they seem to have also had one 

 with blue wattles, like some of the kinds which 



