28 



Fancy Pheasants. 



when treating of him, complete domestication, althougli 

 quite fit to figure em a game bird. 



CHAPTER IX. 



JUNGLE-FOWL. 



Four species of Jungle-fowl are known, all bearing a 

 general resemblance to domestic fowls rather over Ban- 

 tam size. Their carriage is, however, more like that of 

 a Pheasant than that of a tame fowl, the tail being kept 

 low. The cocks have single coinbs of small size, and 

 very long and sharp spurs ; the hens are of course spur- 

 less, and are provided with very small combs and wattles 

 when these are present at all. 



These birds inhabit South-Eastern Asia, and resemble 

 Pheasants in their general habits. Of the various groups 

 of Pheasants the ruflfed ones (gold and Amherst) seem 

 to come nearest to the Jungle-fowls, a ruff and elongated 

 tail-coverts or side-hangers being present in both groups, 

 and in them only in the family ; but in the form of the 

 tail itself there is a great diflierence between them, and 

 in this respect the Kaleeges resemble the Jungle-fowl 

 very closely. The various species of Jungle-fowl are 

 very distinct from each other, although they will 

 interbreed and produce more or less fertile hybrids. 

 Only two are easily obtainable, but all have been 

 exhibited in the London Zoological Gardens ; and it 

 seems worth while to treat of them all in detail, on 

 account of their exceptional interest as relatives of 

 the ancestor of our poultry. 



The Red Jungle-fowl. 

 (Galhis ff alius.) 



This bird is also called by various authors Gallus 

 ferrugineus and Gallus bankivct, and popularly the 

 Bankivd Jungle-fowl, but 1 have preferred using the 

 name commonly given it by Europeans in India, of 

 which country it is a native, ranging east to the 

 Philippine Islands. 



The cock is coloured like a black-red domestic fowl, 

 as may be well seen in the specimens exhibited 

 in the South Kensington Museum. His bill is dark 

 brown and his legs dark slate-colour. The face is of a 

 paler red than the comb and wattles, and the 

 ear-lobes, which are only found in this species of Jungle- 

 fowl, are generally white in Indian specimens, and red in 

 Burmese birds. In June the Red Jungle-cock casts his 

 neck hackles and sickles, and bears short black feather- 

 ing on the neck till September, when his hackle and 

 sickles reappear. 



The hen has a very small comb and wattles ; indeed, 

 the latter are often absent altogether. Her colour is the 

 partridge colour of the hens of black-red breeds, with the 

 same gold and black hackle. The hens of the other Jun- 

 gle-fowl show no distinct hackle. Her legs are dark, 

 like the cock's. The best characters to distinguish the true 

 Jungle-fowl from any domestic breed are therefore the 

 Pheasant-like carriage, dark slaty legs very fine in bone, 

 and small comb. Otherwise they might very well be 

 mistaken for small black-red Game of the old-fashioned 

 fighting type. The resemblance is so very close that 

 there can be no doubt that naturalists are right in re- 

 garding this particular species as the direct ancestor of 

 all our domestic breeds of fowls, allowing for the vari- 

 ations in colour and form which spring up uncliecked 

 when the rigorous discipline of Nature is removed, and 

 can be so readily propagated by selection. I shall 

 show later on that all the other Jungle-fowl differ from 

 the present species in certain points which are never 

 found in any domestic breed, which argues that if they 

 have had any share in forming our tame poultry, the 

 strain they contributed has been swamped ages ago. 

 They also have different voices, whereas the crow of the 



Red Jungle-cock is exactly like that of an ordinary 

 Bantam, as I can personally testify. 



This bird must have been domesticated very early, 

 probably in Burmah, as the Burmese race is found 

 easier to tame tlian the Indian. From Eastern Asia it 

 appears to have passed to Europe through Persia, the 

 Greeks calling it the Persian bird ; but they were not 

 acquainted with it in the time of Homer, although that 

 poet gives Alector (cock) as the name of a man. But 

 this word merely means "the sleepless one," or "the 

 AVake," as our English hero, Here ward, was called ;_ so 

 that it probably at that time had no connection with 

 the wakeful birgr, which afterwards told the watches of 

 the night to the ancients, and it cannot therefore be 

 taken as evidence that the fowl was known to the 

 Greek poet. The ancients, both Greeks and Romans, 

 had a high opinion of the fowl when they did get it, 

 and we know that the latter at all events recognised 

 several distinct breeds at the beginning of the Christian 

 era, including one with five toes, possibly the ancestor of 

 the Dorking. 



The only distinct breeds I have seen in India are 

 Bantams from Japan and Burmah, and the Langshan 

 and the Silky, imported from China, as also a few 

 European breeds from England, and the native Aseel 

 and Chittagongs, together with a curious foreign breed 

 of the latter type from Saigon, which, in its most 

 typical form, has neither ear-lobes nor wattles, but a 

 dewlap) on the throat, and the neck largely or entirely 

 naked and red in the cocks. The common mongrel 

 fowls of India are mostly like European birds, of all 

 colours,*but very generally clean-legged, single-combed, 

 and four-toed, although rosecombs and five toes do 

 occur. The single-combed birds have bigger combs 

 than the Jungle-fowl, with, in the cocks, the upper out- 

 line arched as in our English birds, not sloping as in the 

 wild bird, whose comb is more like a rather large- 

 combed hen's. The legs, too, are not usually dark,- and 

 the face is as red as the comb, .while the cocks do not 

 moult their hackles and assume the " undress collar " of 

 their ancestor. Thus w6 see that the fowl has already 

 varied in several points from its ancestor in its own 

 country, to say nothing of the difference of voice, and 

 this without any special selection being brought into 

 play. 



I have only once seen the Jungle-fowl wild, and then 

 there was a covey, so to speak, of three hens and a cock, 

 and I noticed that the latter bird rati away into ihe 

 jungle, while the liens took to their wings. The crowing I 

 heard on another occasion when the bird was not in 

 sight. Mr. Rutledge had for some time a cock running 

 about his yard at full liberty, but it ultimately strayed 

 away or got killed. I was able, however, to note 

 personally in this specimen the moult I referred to 

 above. The London Zoo once had a number of these 

 birds at liberty in the Gardens, but have not possessed 

 any at all for some time. They bred well, and stood 

 the winter in the open, which is curious, for this species 

 is essentially a bird of warm climates, and does not as- 

 cend the hills into a really temperate climate. Its eggs 

 are pale buff in colour. The red colour of the cocks 

 varies much in intensity even in wild birds, and a black 

 hen has been recorded among these ; but in general the 

 species cannot be called a very variable one, so that it is 

 the more remarkable that its tamo descendants "sport" 

 in colour so much. When, however, they revert to a 

 wild state, they either go back to the old black-red type 

 or show a very marked approximation to it. And few 

 of the Pheasants cfi,n, in my opinion, equal that type in 

 beauty of form and colour. 



The Ceylon Jungle-fowl. 

 {Gallus lafaydti.) 



Ceylon has a Jungle-fowl of its own, which has the 

 island all to itself, and is not found outside it. The 

 cock much resembles the species last described, but 



