52 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



of the end? Peistlietserus may still have to utter his com- 

 plaint : 



" Plague on thee ; but this bird of mine croaks ' back again.' " 



However, the latest accounts are favourable. 



This is an instance of the results of crossing between two 

 very closely related sorts, and many experimentalizing amateurs 

 could produce similar instances. But the results of more dis- 

 cordant and ill-assorted matches are more immediate and 

 striking. The Zoological Society possessed, in May, 1848, two 

 birds bred between the Jungle Fowl (Sonnerat's Cock) and 

 the Red Bantam, that bearing the greatest resemblance to the 

 Bankiva Cock. Their pedigree and their relationship to each 

 species is the same; namely, three-quarters Bantam and one- 

 quarter Jungle Fowl. But they would be pronounced, by most 

 persons to whom their origin was unknown, to be, one a Ban- 

 tam, the other a Jungle Fowl. In 1849, the keepers informed 

 me that, if hybrid chickens between the Jungle and Common 

 Fowl are made to go on breeding in and in, the progeny is at 

 last so weak, that it is impossible to rear them. A half-bred 

 Sonnerat's Jungle and Game Cock, obtained from the Zoolo- 

 gical Society, differs much in voice, carriage, and plumage, 

 from any Common Fowl. He is not sterile, having already 

 been the parent of chickens, but his disposition is strange and 

 cruel : he has already killed one valuable Hen, and severely 

 injured others by lacerating their combs and heads. This doea 

 not look as if the amalgamation of the Jungle and the Domes- 

 tic Fowl were a very natural proceeding. "Le Roi, Lieute- 

 nant of the Rangers at Versailles, put a hen Golden Pheasant 

 to a cock Pheasant of this country, and obtained two cock 

 Pheasants very like the common kind: but the plumage had 

 a dirty cast, and only a few yellow feathers on the head like 

 those of the Golden Pheasant; and these two young males be- 

 ing paired with European hen Pheasants, one succeeded the 



