118 Domestio ANIMALS. 
VIL. 
POULTRY. 
Alsv fowls were prepared for me.—Nehemiah v. 18. 
I—THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 
Sky OBODY knows when or by whom fowls were 
Xt, first.domesticated. There are at most only two 
/ or three allusions to them in the Old Testa- 
ment, and these are of doubtful import. In 
our motto, for instance, the word fowls may 
mean simply birds. 
In the time of Aristotle, who wrote three hundred and fifty 
years before Christ, however, they were evidently common; 
for he speaks of them as familiarly as a naturalist of the pres- 
ent day. Everybody is familiar with the beautiful allusions to 
them in the New Testament. 
The wild origin of our domestic fowl is entirely unknown. 
The race, like that of the Dodo, is probably extinct. The Wild 
Turkey will sooner or later share the same fate. , 
Crested or top-knotted fowls appear to have been unknown 
to the ancients. The earliest: notice of them occurs in Aldro- 
vandi, who speaks o1 # hen with ‘‘a crest like a lark.” 
Domestic fowls now abound in all warm and temperate 
climates, but disappear as we approach the poles. They were 
found in abundance on the islands of the Pacific Ocean by their 
earliest discoverers. How they got there nobody knows. 
Probably in the same way that their human inhabitants found 
their insular homes. Ellis, in his “Polynesian Researches,” 
saya: ‘The traditions of the people state that fowls have 
existed on the islands (Tahiti) as long as the people; that they 
