19b 



THE MALAY PROVINCE 



Tenasserini through the Malay Peninsula to Borneo and Sumatra. Not less 

 noteworthy is the red jungle-fowl (Gallus ferruginous), which also occurs in India, 

 and is generally regarded as the ancestral stock of domesticated game. In India it 

 inhabits the lower ranges of the Himalaya from Kashmir to Assam and the greater 

 part of the Peninsula ; eastward of the Bay of Bengal it is found throughout Burma, 

 the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and Cochin China, while in Java, Sumatra, and other 

 islands it has probably been introduced. Both sexes crow like domesticated cocks, 

 the call of the female being a little shorter than that of her mate. Jungle-fowl 

 breed in the Himalaya between March and July, but farther south much earlier ; 

 they generally lay live or six, but occasionally from nine to eleven, eggs of a pale 

 clay-colour, in a flat depression on the ground, sometimes bare, and at other times 

 lined with grass and dead leaves. Recent experiments demonstrate that in certain 



ARGUS-PHEASANT. 



circumstances the hybrids between the Ceylon jungle-fowl (G. Stanley i) and 

 domesticated fowls are fertile, both inter se and with their parents, and under 

 really favourable conditions it is surmised that complete fertility could be estab- 

 lished. This being so, Darwin's argument from the infertility of the hybrids that 

 G. stanleyi cannot be the parent stock of domesticated poultry no longer holds 

 good. The difficulty, however, is to convert this negative evidence into positive 

 proof that the Ceylon jungle-fowl is entitled to occupy that position. An important 

 point in the case is the fact that when domesticated fowls tend to revert to the 

 wild type, the cocks develop red or brown (never black) breasts. As the Indian 

 Gallus ferruginens is black -breasted, the reversion is thus in the direction of the 

 Sinhalese species, which has a reddish brown breast in the males. An essentially 

 Oriental group is that of the crested fire-backed pheasants, of which the red-backed 

 Malay Lophura rufa may be taken as a well-known example, with a magnificent 

 plumage. Its general colour is brilliant purplish blue, with white shaft-stripes on 

 the flanks, the lower part of the back fiery chestnut-brown, the middle tail-feathers 



