2(H COCK. 



Tn a wild state, the hen-pheasant lays from eighteen 

 to twenty eggs in a season, but in captivity she seldom 

 produces more than ten. In a state of nature she hatches 

 and rears her young with resolution, vigilance, and 

 patience ; but when kept tame, she becomes remiss in 

 these duties, and a common hen is generally made her 

 substitute. 



There are many varieties of the pheasant ; some white, 

 some spotted, and others crested. 



Of pheasants, which are not naturalised in this king 

 dom, but only kept in aviaries, there are the black and 

 white Chinese, the painted Chinese, the horned Indian, 

 the Brazilian, and the peacock-pheasant ; all eminently 

 distinguished by their beauty and general elegance of 

 form. The most common are known by the names of the, 

 gold and the silver pheasants. 



THE COCK. 



Of all birds the cock seems to have been first 

 reclaimed, and earliest taken under the protection of 

 man. Having been long subject to human cultivation, it 

 exhibits a prodigious number of varieties, and has lost 

 almost every trace of its original instincts and inde- 

 pendence. 



At what period this valuable domestic fowl was first 

 domesticated is wholly unknown : but it is generally sup- 

 posed to have been introduced into the western part of 

 the world from Persia : whence Aristophanes calls it the 

 Persian bird ; and says, metaphorically perhaps, that this 

 fowl enjoyed that empire, before some of its earliest 

 monarchs. Under the druidical government, the cock 

 as forbidden as food among the ancient Britons. 



The universality of the domestic state of this bird seems 

 almost to have banished the idea of the wild one ; and 

 were it not found occasionally in the woods of India and 

 some of the Oriental Islands, doubts might be entertained 

 as to the form in which it first appeared in a state of na- 

 ture. However, it is sufficiently known to naturalists, 



