THE PRAISE OF CHANTICLEER 333 



farms now in Australia and both North and South 

 America, though in South Africa there has been, it 

 seems, such a drop in value of late that the poor 

 birds have been allowed even to die of neglect, if 

 press information is correct. 



Taken altogether, man has done well with his 

 domesticated birds ; all, or nearly all, are species 

 of remarkable interest in some way or other, even 

 the plain-coloured Grey Goose being a bird of 

 unusual intelligence and character, while there is 

 nothing in wild nature more noble and gallant than 

 the poets' favourite, honest Chanticleer : 



" While the cock, with lively din, 

 Scatters the rear of Darkness thin, 

 And to the stack, or the barn-door 

 Stoutly struts his dames before." 



And to have disseminated this fine bird from his 

 Indian home " to the cold white ends of the north " 

 and to the farthest Antipodes' seems to me alone 

 to atone for what man has done in the extermination 

 of some unfortunate forms of bird-life. 



The Fowl has run wild over a vast area to the 

 east of its original habit, so that its exact original 

 wild boundaries are unknown, and it ought to be 

 encouraged to become feral in all tropical countries, 

 if only as a food supply for explorers, who often 

 find it nearly as easy to starve in the tropics as in 

 the cold zones. New Guinea, for instance, is a 

 country badly deficient in food supplies at present, 

 and feral poultry there would be a useful stand-by. 



