CHAPTER IX. 



Breeding for Two Hundred Eggs a Year. 



Most of our domestic animals and birds are descendants of 

 some wild prototype. In the zoological gardens of Hamburg 

 and New York are living specimens of the primitive wild 

 horse of Central Asia funny, big-headed little brutes that are 

 representatives of some type of horse that must be hundreds 

 of thousands of years old. Dogs are descendants of wolves 

 and jackals and perhaps of one or two species of wild dogs that 

 have become extinct. Pigeons trace their ancestry back to the 

 rock pigeon, which has a vast range from Northern and East- 

 ern Europe to the shores of the Mediterranean, to Madeira 

 and the Canary Islands, to Abysinia, India and Japan. 



For the prototype of our domestic fowl we must go to Asia, 

 and especially to Northern India, where the Himalayas lift 

 their snowy crests far up into the sky. Here we shall find a 

 l>ird running wild through the dense forests and jungles, which 

 is believed to be identical with the parent type from which all 

 domestic fowls have come. The bird closely resembles the 

 black-breasted Indian Game, with which we are all familiar, 

 albeit somewhat smaller in size and carrying the tail more hor- 

 izontally. From this bird have come all the varieties of our 

 domestic fowls the Stately Spanish, the Crested Polish, the 

 lordly Brahma, the elegant Leghorn, the practical Plymouth 

 Rock, the snowy Wyandotte and the diminutive Bantam. 

 Natural and artificial selection, continued for many years, has 

 created all these differences. 



Even more remarkable than the difference in plumage and 

 form that have been brought about by breeding is the differ- 

 ence in egg production. Callus Bankiva, as this wild jungle 

 fowl is called, lays from six to ten eggs a year, while some of 

 our domestic fowls have been known to lay over 300. This 

 vast increase in egg production has been brought about by im- 

 proved nutrition and by breeding from prolific layers. In 

 other chapters I have emphasized sufficiently the importance 

 of care and feeding in egg production ; in this I wish to call 

 attention to the subject of breeding. 



