6 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



and dense thickets round about, may awaken in the morning to hear 

 the crowing of these cocks, and during the day he may hear the 

 cackling of wild hens and the peeping of their chicks. 



One who has had this experience has remarked on how strange it 

 was to hear rural sounds of civilization and domestication in the vast 

 solitude of the jungle. He has told of being on a piece of cultivated 

 land near the haunts of the wild fowl, after the crops had been cut, 

 and seeing twenty or thirty of the birds advancing boldly into the 

 open in twos and three. But no game is more difficult to reach, and 

 before the stealthiest human foot could approach they had taken wing 

 like quails and found covert in the recesses and dense foliage of the 

 jungle. 



It is said that the natives catch the wild fowls by stretching a rope 

 across where the birds are believed to walk; and tied to the rope are 



Gallus Bankiva, or Jungle Fowl of India, as Painted by Louis A. Stahmer, From 

 Models in the Field Museum, Chicago. 



Strong hair nooses into which the birds are run; or, if the rope is laid 

 on the ground, the birds may step into the nooses, which tighten and 

 hold them. 



Jungle fowls in domestication. The bankiva is hardy when con- 

 fined in captivity, and it withstands climatic changes to good advan- 

 tage when transported from its native haunts— offering a basis for 

 that adaptability of fowls to the wide range of conditions around the 



