RED JUNGLEFOWL 191 



motionless they were bits of the jungle floor mosaic of various pigments, lights and 

 shadows, and with no tell-tale scents to betray them, were safe from all discovery during 

 the absence of the mother. 



In the crop of a two weeks' chick I found a bit of a scarlet earthworm, several small 

 grubs, and a piece of grass blade. Beyond this I have no data as to the food of the 

 young birds. Judging from the scratching proclivities of both sexes, I believe that 

 insects form an important part of their food. As I know that the cocks share in the 

 defence and feeding of the brood, it is reasonable to suppose that he roosts with them 

 from the time when they are first able to flutter up to a limb. Certainly when they are 

 half grown he is found with them or on a neighbouring branch every night. The 

 dangers to which the eggs and very young chicks are subject are those which ever 

 threaten ground-nesting birds ; snakes, lizards, small carnivores, and other predaceous 

 mammals, and the small, jungle-frequenting hawks and owls being the worst. 



RELATION TO MAN 



The details of the past and present relation which obtains between the Red 

 Junglefowl through its descendants and mankind, could easily be elaborated into an 

 entire volume of this monograph. In economic importance the domestic fowl takes 

 rank with the cow, sheep and pig. Many accounts have been written on this subject, 

 one of the best still being Darwin's chapter published more than forty-five years ago. 



Sometime in the far distant past, exactly when we shall probably never know, some 

 primitive race of mankind captured living Junglefowl and tamed them. The birds 

 learned that intimate association with man ensured comparative freedom from attack 

 by beasts of the jungle and a more or less regular supply of food. Certainly their lives 

 are a great deal longer than among their wild kindred. There are records of domestic 

 cocks twenty-four, twenty-five and even thirty years old. So in numberless races and 

 varieties we find the domestic fowl as the companion of man distributed over the whole 

 world, with the exception of the high mountains and the polar regions, where it is 

 infertile, and, therefore, cannot be bred. It everywhere betrays its southern origin by 

 its love for warm, sunny places, its dislike of cold, and the infertility in chilly regions 

 above mentioned. The early history of mankind and the fowl, as far as we know it, 

 I have detailed elsewhere. 



After the first domestication, and throughout succeeding years, during generation 

 after generation, these tamed fowls of the jungle made three separate appeals to man. 

 First, he reared them and found their flesh and eggs goodly food, and little by little 

 learned to breed birds which either were large in size, and thus produced an unusual 

 amount of flesh, or by selection, increased feeding, and in other ways brought about 

 an enormously increased egg productivity. In the second place the natural pugnacity 

 of these birds appealed to the primitive instincts of savage man, and many generations 

 of him must have given much thought to the sport of cock-fighting to have brought 

 into existence the specialized race of game-cocks with its peculiar structure and 

 abnormal pugnacity. Thirdly, when the plasticity of form and structure of Junglefowl 

 bred in captivity became evident through the variation of successive generations, the 

 aesthetic side of mankind seized upon this as a sort of living, organic potter's clay, and 



