192 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



with this material, breeders and fanciers from early in human history to the latest 

 exhibitors at our modern poultry shows have exercised their ingenuity in the production 

 of beautiful, bizarre or monstrous races of domestic fowls. All this is of interest to 

 us only as showing the possibilities inherent in a species of wild bird when it has 

 become adapted to domestication. Emulation and competition have become so great 

 that in England alone, twenty poultry shows are sometimes held within the space of 

 a week, and prize fowls may fetch at auction from five hundred to seven hundred and 

 fifty dollars. 



The plasticity of domestic fowls is very remarkable, and has furnished the 

 mutationists with considerable evidence. The unnatural conditions of their lives, 

 however, doubtless accounts for much of this, and in Nature, for example, among feral 

 Junglefowl there is unquestionably much less of this abnormal variation. Davenport 

 says (chapter on Mutation in "Fifty Years of Darwinism," 1909, p. 171) that within' 

 a period of four years " in the tgg, unhatched, I have obtained Siamese twins, anteriorly 

 duplex individuals with shortened upper jaw . . . and chicks with thigh-bones absent. 

 There have been reared chicks with toes grown together by a web, without toenail, or 

 with two toenails on one toe ; with five toes, six toes, seven toes, or three toes ; with 

 one wing lacking or both absent ; with two pairs of spurs ; without oil-gland or tail 

 (though from tailed ancestry) ; with neck nearly devoid of feathers ; with cerebral hernia 

 and a great crest ; with feather-shaft curved ; with barbs twisted and dicotomously 

 branched, or lacking altogether. Of the comb alone I have a score of forms : single, 

 double, triple, quintuple and walnut, V-shaped, cup-shaped, comprising two horns, or 

 four or six, absent posteriorly, absent anteriorly, and absent altogether." And in 

 addition to the increase in egg production, of which we shall speak shortly, we find eggs 

 varying much in colour, and of all sizes and shapes, from sausage-like to a complete 

 horseshoe. Some of these abnormalities are very patently, wholly inimical to the life 

 of the organism, but others have been developed and increased by selection until they 

 have come to be characteristic of races and breeds known over all the world. 



Game fowls are more like wild Red Junglefowl than any other domestic race, 

 differing chiefly in being larger and in carrying the tail more erect. When these birds 

 were bred for fighting only, the general proportions of the wild Junglefowl were not 

 departed from, but in recent years, stimulated by the desire to excel in competitive 

 poultry shows, breeders have wrought remarkable changes in this race, especially as to 

 extreme length of neck and legs. Within a comparatively short time birds had been 

 evolved with the breast over a foot from the ground. The sickle feathers of the tail 

 have been shortened, and the entire plumage rendered firm and closely pressed to the 

 body. These abnormal proportions, of course, unfit the birds for fighting. On the 

 other hand, as in many other races, one strain of the original type of game bird has been 

 reduced in size through selective breeding, and game bantams of exceedingly small size 

 have been produced. In this race as a whole there is a curious tendency towards the 

 assumption of female plumage by the cock, and such breeds are known as "henny " game. 



Years ago Temminck gave the name Gallus giganteus to a fowl of great size from 

 the Malay States. This is now well known as a race appropriately called Malays, which 

 are much larger than the game, and with very long and heavy legs. In fact so 

 disproportionately long are these limbs that the bird often rests its entire tarsus upon 



