THE COCK. 



61 



class of birds is that of dusting themselves. 

 They lie flat in some dusty place, and with 

 their wings and feet raise and scatter the dust 

 over their whole body. What may be their 

 reason for thus doing, it is not easy to explain. 

 Perhaps the heat of their bodies is such, that 

 (hey require this pnwder to be interposed be- 

 tween their feathers, ro keep them from lying 

 <oo close together, and thus increasing that 

 Leat with which they are incommoded 



CHAP. II. 



OF THE COCK 



' 



ALL birds taken under the protection of man 

 lose a part of their natural figure, and are al- 

 tered, not only in their habits, but their very 

 form. Climate, food, and captivity, are three 

 very powerful agents in producing these altera- 

 tions ; and those birds that have longest felt 

 their influence under human direction are the 

 most likely to have the greatest variety in 

 their figures, their plumage, and their dispo- 

 sitions. 



Of all other birds, the cock seems to be the 

 oldest companion of mankind, to have been 

 (irst reclaimed from the forest, and taken to 

 supply the accidental failure of the luxuries or 

 necessities of life. As he is thus longest un- 

 der the care of man, so of all others perhaps 

 he exhibits the greatest number of varieties, 

 there being scarce two birds of this species 

 that exactly resemble each other in plumage 

 and form. The tail, which makes such a 

 beautiful figure in the generality of these 

 birds, is yet found entirely wanting in others ; 

 and not only the tail, but the rump also. The 

 toes, which are usually four in all animals of 

 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 spe- 

 cies that comes from Japan, which instead of 

 feathers seems to be covered all 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 monarchs. This animal 

 was in fact known so early, even in the most 

 savage parts of Europe, tbai-we are told the 

 cock was one of the forbidden foods among the 

 ancient Britons. Indeed, the domestic fowl 

 seems to have banished the wild one. Persia 

 itself, that first introduced it to our acquain- 

 tance, seems no longer to know it in its natu- 

 ral 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. 1 



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 bis comb 

 and wattles yellow and purple. There is an- 

 other peculiarity also in those of the Indian 

 woods ; their bones, which when boiled with 

 us are white, as every body knows, in those 



1 The bird known in India by the name of the " Jun- 

 gle Fowl" is the " Wild Cock" of Sonnerat, who was the 

 first to describe it in his " Voyage anx Indes Orientates." 

 This naturalist maintained with considerable zeal that 

 this bird formed the stock whence most of our races of 

 domestic fowl have proceeded. He concurred in the 

 opinion of Buflbn, that most of our varieties of domestic 

 fowl have proceeded from a single type, and that the dif- 

 ferences which we perceive among them have resulted 

 from accidents of climate, domestication, and crossings 

 of varieties. Sonnerat, who did not or would not know 

 of any other species of wild cock than this for he speaks 

 slightingly of the authority of Dampier, who mentions 

 that he saw wild cocks in the Indian Archipelago na- 

 turally enough concluded that in this jungle-fowl he had 

 found the primitive stock. Subsequent inquiries have, 

 however, confirmed the statements of Dampier, not only 

 as to the existence of species of wild fowl in the Indian 

 Archipelago; but it is also admitted that the Bankiva 

 species in Java, and the Jago species in Sumatra, more 

 nearly approximate to our common fowl than that now 

 under consideration, and to which Sonnerat's statements 

 refer. Upon the whole, it seems that our varieties of 

 domestic fowl proceed from mixtures of original species. 

 Practical observers arrive at much the same conclusions 

 on this point with scientific naturalists. It is thus, for 

 instance, considered in India that our game cock origi- 

 nated from a mixture of the jungle cock with wild spe- 

 cies in Malaya and Chittagong. Altogether, however, it 

 must be admitted that, on this disputed point, very little 

 is actually known ; and the domestication of the bird as- 

 cends to such remote antiquity, that it seems hopeless to 

 determine the era, and still more hopeless to ascertain 

 the original species with precision. 



