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 representa- 

 tives 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 eastern Europe to the 

 shores of the Mediterranean, to Madeira and the Canary Islands, 

 to Abyssinia, 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 bird run- 

 ning 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 horizontally. 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 diminu- 

 tive Bantam. Natural and artificial selection, continued for 

 many years, has created all these differences. 



Even more remarkable than the differences in plumage and 

 form that have been brought about by breeding is the difference 

 in egg production. Callus Bankiva, as this wild jungle fowl is 

 called, lays from six to ten eggs a year, while some of our domes- 

 tic fowls have been known to lay over 300. This vast increase in 

 egg production has been brought 2 bout by improved nutrition and 

 by breeding from prolific layers. In other chapters I have empha- 

 sized sufficiently the importance of care and feeding in egg pro- 

 duction ; in this I wish to call attention to the subject of breeding. 



