TYPES, BREEDS, AND VARIETIES OF FOWLS 345 



human habitations, and even should connections with domestic cocks 

 occur, the results would not be so readily observed. In captivity 

 jungle fowls of both sexes are shy breeders, the females especially 

 so ; but to a poultry breeder familiar with many instances of the 

 effects of changes in location, diet, and habits of life on fertility 

 conclusions on this point drawn from wild birds in captivity and 

 from their immediate descendants have little significance. 



Economically the presumption is that with fowls, as with other 

 poultry, the wild type as first brought into domestication was in 

 itself desirable, and that some, perhaps the greater number, of the 

 wild stock were of docile disposition. The desirability of such 

 individuals would quickly lead to their domestication or extermina- 

 tion. The smallest and wildest specimens of the race would escape 

 capture, or perhaps return to wild life to avoid man more carefully 

 than before. Because of their lack of economic value he would 

 refrain from pursuing these, but the larger or more venturesome 

 would be constantly exposed to his attacks. The inevitable results 

 of such conditions in a favorable environment would be the de- 

 velopment of a race of fowls less valuable and less adapted to 

 domestication than the. original type. 



Considering the case from the economic point of view, there is 

 little reason to suppose that primitive man domesticated such a 

 fowl as the jungle fowl of to-day. The antiquity and wide distribu- 

 tion of game types have led some to infer that fowls were first 

 domesticated for the amusement rather than for the use of man, 

 but the domestication of fowls evidently occurred centuries earlier 

 than the earliest authentic records of game fowls. Combining the 

 economic and evolutionist points of view, the theory that the 

 domestic fowls of all varieties, and the jungle fowls as well, are 

 descended from a common ancestor becomes much more plausi- 

 ble than the commonly accepted theory. On this theory, and con- 

 sidering what is known or may be reasonably inferred in regard 

 to the differentiation of types in domestication, the original type 

 may be constructed with sufficient accuracy to afford an initial type 

 from which all the others have been developed. Such a type must 

 be assumed at the outset, and the value of the assumption demon- 

 strated incidentally in the course of the presentation of the his- 

 tories and descriptions of popular types. Hence it is assumed that 



