28 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



tion, whichever case we take, Domestic Fowls must have 

 been held in familiar esteem for many, many ages before we 

 have any clear record of them. Either supposition attaches to 

 them a highly interesting and quite mysterious degree of an- 

 tiquity. Even in our own country they appear to have existed 

 at a time and in a state of society when we should least have 

 expected to find them. "The inland parts of Britain are in- 

 habited by those whom fame reports to be natives of the soil. 

 They think it unlawful to feed upon hares, pullets, or geese ; 

 yet they breed them up for their diversion and pleasure." 

 Cdesar de Betto Gallico, lib. v. cap. xii., Duncan's Translation. 

 Dr. Kidd, in his Bridgewater Treatise, doubts whether the 

 Camel ever existed in a wild and independent state. We do 

 not go quite so far as that in scepticism in the case of Fowls, 

 but still believe that those who, at this epoch, hunt for Cocks 

 and Hens of the same species as our tame ones, either on the 

 Continent of Asia, or throughout the whole inhabited vast 

 Indian Archipelago, will have undertaken but a fruitless search. 

 For certain writers have been at great pains for some years 

 past, with but little success, except in their own conceit, to 

 pitch upon the wild origin of our Domestic Fowls. The first 

 decided attempts appear to have been made by Sonnerat, and 

 to have been followed up by succeeding French writers, whose 

 errors are glaring, and in whose praise little can be said. 

 Reaumer, whose writings are really philosophical and valuable, 

 devoted his inquiries to more practical objects, but Sonnerat 

 was merely a blind leader of the blind, if there is justice in the 

 criticism of Mr. Swainson, who pronounces that " Sonnerat' s 

 works (Paris, 1776 and 1778), although often cited by the 

 French authors, are very poor; the descriptions vague, and the 

 figures, particularly of the birds, below mediocrity." Buffon, 

 who did not die till 1788, had therefore an opportunity of 

 adopting Sonnerat' s Jungle Fowl as the parent of Cocks and 

 Hens, and his vivid imagination made him very likely to have 



