HISTORICAL ASPECT 9 



three thousand years ago. It breeds pure without any stan- 

 dard of excellence, and lays the same number of eggs as its 

 ancestor did before the Christian era. It crows at the mid- 

 night hour, but it shuns the society of man. It is pure-bred 

 because it has the same characteristics as a thousand ances- 

 tors have had. While it revels in the jungle and abhors the 

 sight of man it has millions of relatives living useful lives, 

 ministering to the wants of man, and on two continents pro- 

 ducing yearly a billion dollars worth of poultry food-pro- 

 ducts, just because away back three thousand years ago a 

 few of its ancestors were caught and robbed of the freedom 

 of the jungle. What a triumph domestication of the fowl 

 has been ! What a mint of money it has coined since it gave 

 up its freedom in the wild and became a part of civilization. 



Antiquity of Domestic Fowl. Let us now consider brief- 

 ly the antiquity of the fowl. It is not possible to give dates ; 

 it is not even possible to give the century when the fowl was 

 domesticated. It is known from New Testiment scripture 

 that cocks and hens existed two thousand years ago. There 

 is no reference to them in the Old Testament ; but we find 

 the egg spoken of by Job in these words : " Is there any taste 

 in the white of an egg ? " As to the kind of egg we are left in 

 doubt. That fowls were under domestication two thousand 

 years ago there is no doubt ; that they existed several hun- 

 dred years before that, there is authentic proof ; how much 

 longer must remain largely a matter of conjecture. 



In tracing the antiquity of the hen, the following facts 

 have been mentioned: When Peter denied the Savior the 

 cock crowed thrice. That establishes the origin of the fowl 

 before the Christian era. Mention is made of cock-fighting 

 in the Codes of Mann, a thousand years or more before 

 Christ. A Chinese encyclopedia, 1400 years B.C., mentions 

 the fowl. In the religion of Zoroaster the cock figures as a 

 sacred bird. Figures on Babylonian cylinders show that 



