130 HISTORY OF 



den foods among the ancient Britons. Indeed, 

 the domestic fowl seems to have banished 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 regard 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 those are as black as ebony. Whether this 

 tincture proceeds from their food, as the bones 

 are tinctured red by feeding upon madder, I 

 leave to the discussion of others : satisfied with 

 the fact, let us decline speculation. 



In their first propagation in Europe, there 

 were distinctions then that now subsist no longer. 

 The ancients esteemed those fowls whose plumage 

 was reddish as invaluable j but as for the white, 

 it was considered as utterly unfit for domestic 

 purposes. These they regarded as subject to 

 become a prey to rapacious birds ; and Aristotle 

 thinks them less fruitful than the former. In- 

 deed, his division of those birds seems to be taken 

 from their culinary uses j the one sort he calls 



