172 COCK, HEN, AND CHICKENS. 



also. The toes, which are usually four in all animals ot 

 the poultry kind, yet in a species of the cock are found to 

 amount to five. The feathers, which lie so sleek and in 

 such beautiful order in most of those we are acquainted 

 with, are in a peculiar breed all inverted, and stand 

 staring the wrong way. Nay, there is a species that 

 comes from Japan, which, instead of feathers, seems to be 

 covered over with hair. These and many other varieties, 

 are to be found in this animal, which seem to be the marks 

 this early prisoner bears of his long captivity. 



It is not well ascertained when the cock was first made 

 domestic in Europe, but it is generally agreed that we first 

 had him in our western world from the kingdom of Persia. 

 Aristophanes calls the cock the Persian bird, and tells us 

 he enjoyed that kingdom before some of its earliest mon- 

 archs. This animal was in fact known so early, even in 

 the most savage parts of Europe, that we are told the 

 cock was one of the forbidden foods among the ancient 

 Britons. Indeed, the domestic fowl seems to have ban- 

 ished the wild one. Persia itself, that first introduced it 

 to our acquaintance, seems no longer to know it in its 

 natural form ; and if we did not find it wild in some of the 

 woods of India, as well as those of the Islands in the 

 Indian ocean, we might begin to doubt, as we do with re- 

 gard to the sheep, in what form it first existed in a state of 

 nature. 



But those doubts no longer exist : the cock is found in 

 the island of Tinian, in many others of the Indian ocean, 

 and in the woods on the coast of Malabar, in his ancient 

 state of independence. In his wild condition, his plumage 

 is black and yellow, and his comb and wattles yellow and 

 purple. There is another peculiarity also in those of the 

 Indian woods; their bones, which when boiled with us are 

 white, as every body knows, in these are as black as ebony. 

 Whether this tincture proceeds from their food, as the 

 bones are tinctured red by feeding upon madder, I leave 



