THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 29 



adopted so apparently clear an account, ready telegraphed for 

 his reception. But instead of that, he speaks. hesitatingly and 

 doubtfully of the derivation of our Domestic Fowls from Wild 

 Cocks, and seems to despair of indicating their origin. He 

 says, " Amidst the immense number of different breeds of the 

 gallinaceous tribe, how shall we determine the original stock? 

 So many circumstances have operated, so many accidents have 

 concurred : the attention, and even the whim of man have so 

 much multiplied the varieties, that it appears extremely diffi- 

 cult to trace them to their source." 



Those authors who, by a pleasant legerdemain, so easily 

 transform one of the wild Indian Galli into a Barndoor Fowl 

 who put the Jungle Cock, the Bankiva\iock, or the Gigantic 

 St. Jago (?)* bird under a bushel, hocus pocus a little, lift up 

 the cover, and then exhibit a veritable Chanticleer write as 

 if they had only to catch a wild-bird in the woods, turn it into 

 a courtyard for a week or two, and make it straightway become 



* St. Jago, one of the Cape de Verd islands, may furnish wild 

 Guinea Fowl, but scarcely wild Cocks. The "Gallus Giganteus," 

 the great " St. Jago Fowl," is the offspring of an absurd misquota- 

 tion from Marsden, which has run the round of most compilations. 

 Jago, the native Sumatran or Malay word for a particular breed, has 

 been mistaken for "St. Jago," the name for an island. Marsden 

 was well acquainted with his subject, and there is nothing like refer- 

 ring to an original authority. 



" There are in Sumatra the domestic Hen (ayam}, some with black 

 bones, and some of the sort we call Freezeland or Negro Fowls ; Hen 

 of the woods (ayam baroogo] ; ihejago breed of fowls, which abound 

 in the southern end of Sumatra, and western of Java, are remarkably 

 large ; I have seen a Cock peck off a common dining table : when fa- 

 tigued, they sit down on the first joint of the leg, and are then taller 

 than the common fowls. It is strange if the same country, Bantam, 

 produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by that name." - 

 Marsden 's History of Sumatra, p. 98. 



