EVOLUTION IN NATURE AND UNDER DOMESTICATION. 235 



In Ketanggoengan West we saw two broods of chicks, 

 whose father was a reddish Bekisar with bluish wings, median 

 wattle and unserrated comb. This Bekisar (there were two 

 males) was bred from a buff-bantam male and a female Gallus 

 varius. 



Charcoal-burners often take a few hens with them into the 

 jungle, where they mate mith Varius males, and produce Beki- 

 sars. They claim that hen Bekisars, which have no value com- 

 mercially, are fertile with wild males, and a certain number of 

 the apparently pure Gallus varius offered for sale on Java are 

 assuredly produced by a sort of "Grading" process, a repeated 

 back-crossing to Varius males. 



If questioned as to the origin of the tame chickens, the na- 

 tives of Java will declare Gallus varius to be the wild progenitor 

 of all tame breeds. Although this is undoubtedly untrue, it is 

 certain that a great many characters common to Varius are 

 quite common in the Kampoong chickens on that island, such 

 as a single median wattle, unserrated comb, blue and yellow 

 tinge of the comb, round hackles It would be interesting to 

 find out just how much variability would result from a cross 

 with Varius. It is certainly worth noting that on Java, where 

 hybrids between the two species are continually taken up into 

 the population of domestic chickens the variability of these 

 animals is stupendous. Not only do we see all shapes of comb, 

 and all colours common to chickens, although the colour of the 

 wild Gallus bankiva is rather uncommon, but we saw charac- 

 ters in Java which we never noticed an57where else. To enumer- 

 ate a few of these: A common sight is a hen with pnly the 

 feathers of the neck turned up, and we often saw animals in 

 which the feathers of the back-^were also recurved. Chickens 

 with more or less complete loss of feathers are commonly met 

 with, ranging from animals with bare necks like the Siebenbur- 

 ger breed, to fowls that are completely naked with the excep- 

 tion of a dozen feathers on each shoulder. The penguin-like car- 

 riage of the Pouter pigeon and of the Runnerduck is sometimes 

 seen in fowls. In such animals the head is kept well back of the 



