Ill] OF POULTRY 291 



by which they are to be reared; and (5) the method 

 of fattening them, which forms an appendix to the 

 other four heads. 



3 The term **hen" is applied in a special sense to 

 female barn-door fowls; the males are called cocks, 

 the half-males — those which have been castrated — 

 capons. Cocks are castrated — to make them capons 

 — by burning them with a hot iron at the lower 

 extremities ^ of the legs until the skin bursts, and 

 the sore which rises is smeared over with potter's 

 clay. 



4 He who looks to have a poultry-farm complete at 

 every point should of course procure all three kinds, 

 but he must have, above all others, barn-door fowls. 

 In buying these, those should be chosen^ which 

 are prolific; their short feathers should be mostly 



* Ad infima crura. This is strange — but Columella (viii, 2, 

 3) has: Nee tamen id patiuntur amissis genitalihtis, sed ferro 

 candente calcaribus inustisy quae cum ignea vi consumpta sunt., 

 facta ulcera^ dum consanescant, figulari creta linu?itur, and 

 Pliny (x, 21): Desinunt canere castrati: quid duobus Jit modis, 

 lumbis adustis candente ferro (so Aristotle, H. A., ix, 50), aut 

 imis cruribus . . . facilius ita pinguescunt. 



' Eligat. Columella's description (viii, 2, 7, etc.) of the 

 farm-yard fowl, which closely follows Varro's, is of the native 

 Italian breed {vemaculum nostrum); consequently this is the 

 breed described by Varro. 



The cock came to Italy probably from Persia (it is mentioned 

 in the Zend Avesta) via Asia Minor and Greece, to which it 

 was brought in the sixth or fifth century (neither Homer nor 

 Hesiod mentions it, but Aristophanes frequently does so). 

 Athenaeus (xiv, 20) places the original home of the cock in 

 Persia. 



