WILD FOWL. 



where : it is not long since it was positively 

 known where the latter still exist in small quan- 

 tities. 



Oliver de Serres says, " Among the moderns, 

 7 am the first that had seen fowls in a state of 

 liberty. On my return from a first voyage to 

 Guiana in 1795, I published a note on the sub- 

 ject of the wild cock and hen, which I have 

 every reason to think natives of the hottest 

 countries of the new continent. In traveling 

 over the inextricable forests of Guiana, when 

 the dawn of day began to appear, amidst the 

 immense woods of lofty trees which fall under 

 the stroke of time only, I had often heard a 

 crowing, similar to that of our cocks, but only 

 weaker. 



" The considerable distance which separated 

 me from every inhabited place, could not allow 

 one to think this crowing was produced by do- 

 mesticated birds ; and the natives of those parts, 

 who were in company with me, assured me it 

 was the voice of wild cocks. Every one of 

 the colony of Cayenne who had gone very far 

 up the country, give the same account of the 

 fact. Some have met with a few of these wild 

 fowl, and I have seen one myself. They have 

 the same forms, the fleshy comb on the head, 

 the gait of our fowls, only they are smaller, be- 

 ing hardly larger than the common pigeon ; 

 their plumage is brown or rufous." 



Some older travelers have spoken before of 

 these wild fowl of South America. The Span- 

 iard Acosta, provincial of the Jesuits at Peru, 

 lias positively said that " they existed there 

 before the arrival of his countrymen, and that 

 they were called, in the language of the country, 

 talpa, and their eggs ponto. The ancient Mex- 

 icans had reduced these small fowls to domes- 

 tication; they called them, as Gemell Carreri 

 informs us, chiacchialacca ; and he adds, that 

 they were similar to our domesticated fowl, ex- 

 cept they had brownish feathers, and that they 

 are rather smaller. A fresh testimony, that of 

 a traveler who has been all over Dutch Guiana 

 after me, is again come in support of facts al- 

 ready certain. Captain Steadman has observed 

 that the natives rear a very small species of 

 fowls, whose feathers are ruffled, and which 

 seem to be natives of that country." 



It is then an indisputable fact that a tribe of 

 wild fowl, very much like our cocks and hens, 

 exists in the inland parts of South America. One 

 can not reasonably suppose that this tribe springs 

 from birds of the same genus which Europeans 

 have transported thither, since they are only 

 met with very far from any inhabited place ; 

 then there is a remarkable difference in the size 

 of these and the common fowl; and, accord- 

 ing to the assertion of Acosta, they existed in 

 Peru before the arrival of the Spaniards. 



But a learned traveler, to whom ornithology 

 in particular is indebted for many capital dis- 

 coveries, M. Sonnerat, has again found the spe- 

 cies of the wild fowl on the antique land of In- 

 dia, in the mountains of the Ghauts, which sep- 

 arate Malabar from Cor6mandel. More suc- 

 cessful than other travelers, M. Sonnerat took 

 home two birds, a male and female, of the In- 

 dian tribe, and published a description of them in 

 his "Travels to the Indies and China;" and he 

 has taken them to be the primitive stock, whence 

 have sprung all the tribes of our domestic fowl. 

 He concurred in the opinion of BuflFon, that 

 most of our varieties of domestic fowl have pro- 

 ceeded from a single type ; and that the differ- 

 ences which we perceive among them have re- 

 sulted from accidents of climate, domestica- 

 tion, and crossing of varieties. Sonnerat did 

 not or would not know of any other species of 

 wild cock than this for he speaks slightly of 

 the authority of Dampier, who mentions that he 

 saw wild cocks 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 refers. Upon the whole, it seems that 

 our varieties of domestic fowl proceed from mix- 

 tures of one general species. Practical observ- 

 ers arrive at much the same conclusion on this 

 point with scientific naturalists. It is thus, for 

 instance, considered in India that our game- 

 cock originated from a mixture of the jungle 

 cock with the wild species in Malay and Chitta- 

 gong. Altogether, however, it must be admit- 

 ted that, on this disputed point, very little is 

 actually known, and the domestication of the 

 bird ascends to such remote antiquity, that it 



