BREEDS OF CHICKENS 
species, frizzles with their feathers all awry, the Polish with 
their deformed skulls and the sooty fowls whose skin and 
bones are black, are some of the remarkable characters that 
have sprung up and been preserved under domestication. The 
varieties of domestic fowl form one of the most profound 
exhibits of man’s control over the laws of inheritance. What 
makes these wonders all the more inexplicable is that these 
profound changes were accomplished in an age when a scien-\ 
tific study of breeding was a thing unheard of. 
The wild chicken whom Darwin credits as the parent of the 
modern gallinaceous menagerie, is smaller than modern fowls 
and is colored in a manner similar to the Black-breasted 
Game. The habits of this bird are like those of the quail and 
prairie-chicken, both of which belong to the same zoological 
family. 
From its natural home in India the chicken spread east and 
west. Chinese poultry culture is ancient. In China, as well 
as in India, the chief care seems to have been to breed very 
large fowls, and from these countries all the large, heavily 
feathered and feather legged chickens of the modern world 
have come. 
Poultry is also known to have been bred in the early Baby- 
lonian and Egyptian periods. Here, however, the progress was 
in a different line from that of China. Artificial incubation 
was early developed, and the selection was for birds that pro- 
duced eggs continually, rather than for those that laid fewer 
eggs and brooded in the natural manner. 
The Hgyptian type of chicken spread to the countries 
bordering on the Mediterranean, and from Southern Hurope 
our non-sitting breeds of fowls have been imported. Through- 
out the countries of Northern Europe minor differences were 
developed. The French chickens were selected for the quality 
of the meat, while in Poland the peculiar top-knotted breed is 
supposed to have been formed. 
The English Dorking is one of the oldest of European breeds 
and is possessed of five toes. Five-toed fowls were reported in 
Rome and exist to-day in Turkey and Japan. The Dorkings 
may be descended directly from the Roman fowls, or various 
strains of five-toed fowls may have arisen independently from 
the preservation of sports. 
The chief point to be noted in all European poultry is that 
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