DUCKS 



127 



domestication. Although in the wild state it is a migratory bird, 

 in domestication it soon becomes too heavy to fly far. After a 

 few generations in domestication it becomes as large as com- 

 mon domestic stock, loses its power of flight, and cannot be dis- 

 tinguished from stock that has been domesticated for centuries. 

 Mallard Ducks captured in the wild state and kept in captivity 

 have been known to lay from eighty to one hundred eggs in a 

 season, which is as many as the average domestic duck lays. 



When ducks were first domesticated is not known. The figure 

 of a duck was used in the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphics. As 



FIG. 122. Domesticated Mallard Ducks, Brook View Farm, 

 Newbury, Massachusetts 



the Mallard is widely distributed and so easily tamed, and as 

 domestic ducks of the same type (but apparently not related in 

 domestication) are found in widely separated parts of the earth, 

 it is plain that the distribution of domestic ducks has been less 

 dependent upon the movements of the human race than the 

 distribution of the fowl. Wherever at any time in the history of 

 the world male and female wild Mallards happened to be caught 

 and kept in captivity, a domestic race might be developed. A 

 missionary who went to Africa in 1885 and worked among the 

 Bakubas a people more than a thousand miles from the west 

 coast of the continent reported that he found there such little 

 mongrel fowls as are common elsewhere in Africa, and a local 



