258 UNDERTAKE AN EXPERIMENT. [CHAP. 11. 



After reading and hearing all these flattering accounts, 

 it is very natural that many amateurs, ourselves in- 

 cluded, should have been sorely tempted and sadly 

 puzzled about the Penelopes not their specific distinc- 

 tions those are usually left to the learned to unravel, 

 and Temminck has laboured with great effect at that 

 task but about the alleged possibility of their being 

 actually added to our stock of useful poultry. We have 

 seen that almost every late ornithological writer, Tem- 

 minck, Swainson, Bennett, Martin, &c., talk as if we 

 had little more to do than to procure them, and set 

 them a-going in our farm yards, to make them produce, 

 almost as freely as Hens, an abundance of first-rate 

 fowls for the table. But, as it appears, no one has yet 

 succeeded in doing this with Guans, any more than with 

 Curassows ; nor can we find, in any books of South 

 American travels, positive evidence that they are reared 

 in captivity in their native country, although they are 

 very frequently kept tame there as pets. In the winter, 

 therefore, of 1848-9, living specimens were obtained 

 from a London dealer, Mr. Jamrach, of 164, Ratcliffe 

 Highway, who purchases largely for the Zoological So- 

 ciety. They really were, as they are described by na- 

 turalists, affectionate, confiding, and even troublesomely 

 tame. But the object was not merely to procure a 

 pleasing aviary bird, but either to get them to propa- 

 gate, and see our neighbours and friends do so likewise, 

 as the savans have told us we may and ought to do, and 

 thereupon lay claim to the great merit and honour of 

 distributing and dispersing an actual addition to our 

 poultry stock; or to ascertain, by fairly testing their 

 capabilities, the fact that they are not easily rearable in 

 England, and so save other fanciers of exotic poultry 



