THE R UMPLESS FOWL. 3 79 



customers did not fancy them on account of their want of tail. On 

 asking her what had become of the parent fowls, she said that they 

 both suddenly disappeared, a few weeks after she had sold the young 

 ones, at the Market Cross, in Wakefield. Two or three unknown 

 mendicants had been lurking in the outskirts of the village, and she 

 was sure the vagabonds had nipped up her poor fowls. 



My own rumpless fowl, mentioned above, came to an untimely 

 end. He was at the keeper's house ; and as the keeper had got a 

 tame fox, I foresaw that some day or other my bird would fall into 

 its clutches. To prevent the impending catastrophe, I sent up one 

 morning to the keeper, and desired that the fowl might be brought 

 down to the hall in the evening. A giant Malay fowl espied it as 

 soon as it had left its roost the next day ; and, indignant at the ap- 

 pearance of such a rival stranger on the island, he drove it headlong 

 into the water, where it perished before assistance could be procured. 

 But though its vital spark has /led for ever, still its outer form will 

 remain here, probably for ages yet to come. I dissected it, and then 

 I restored its form and features in a manner that may cause it to 

 be taken for a living bird. This fowl now stands alongside of a 

 common barn-door hen, which had assumed the plumage of a male, 

 and whose fate has already been recounted in Mr London's Magazine 

 of Natural History. She has been furnished by nature with an oil- 

 gland and a handsome tail ; he has been deprived by nature of both 

 these appendages. Still, his feathers are as glossy and in as high 

 condition as those of his companion. I consider this fact as con- 

 clusive evidence against the received opinion, that birds make use of 

 the contents of the oil-gland in order to lubricate their feathers. If 

 they really did make use of it, the state of the plumage on one of 

 these birds ought to bear marks of its application. 



Before I can be convinced that birds lubricate their feathers, I 

 must require him who inspects these two fowls (with a magnifying 

 glass if he chooses), to point out to me a difference in the plumage 

 of the bird with an oil-gland from that of the bird without one. 

 When he shall have done this, I will yield, and willingly confess, 

 that a close attention to this subject, for a very long time, has 

 availed me nothing, and has only been the means of leading me into 

 an evident error. 



