TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



CHAPTER I 



WHERE OUR POULTRY CAME FROM 



I EXPECT it has occurred to a good many of 

 my readers to wonder where all the poultry- 

 yard birds first came from, and what they 

 were like when they were wild, for one can 

 hardly imagine them as always having been 

 tame. Some savage tribes keep fowls, but a 

 great many do not, and there is nothing about 

 poultry - keeping in the Old Testament, so 

 that the early Jews did not know anything 

 about poultry-yard birds. 



One does not see wild fowls living in our 

 woods, so it is pretty obvious that they are 

 foreign birds, although even Julius Caesar, 

 when he landed here, found the ancient 

 Britons keeping fowls for pleasure which 

 meant cock-fighting, I strongly suspect, as 



