TYPES, BREEDS, AND VARIETIES OF FOWLS 353 



direction of a meat type were made in some cases. Of these 

 breeds and their varieties, a brown Leghorn with small single 

 comb comes nearest (and very near) the assumed initial type, 

 and also resembles the black-breasted red game fowl. On this 

 account, and because, also, of the extent to which indications of 

 Leghorn blood now appear in ordinary stock in almost all parts 

 of Europe, some suppose that the Italian, or Leghorn, is the 

 foundation stock of all European races. This is not impossible. 

 It is even highly probable that the Romans introduced their fowls 

 wherever they went in the period of their conquests, and that these 

 introductions sometimes influenced the native stock. But certain 

 general differences in the laying type as it was developed along 

 the Mediterranean, and as developed along a more northerly route 

 westward, are significant, suggesting differences in ideals going 

 much farther back than the Roman conquests. These differences 

 will appear from the descriptions of the European breeds of the 

 laying type. Before describing these, something should be said of 

 their ancestry. 



The early laying type. The common native stock in all parts 

 of the world except southeastern Asia seems to have been, from 

 earliest times, of the initial type described, having this type slightly 

 modified, sometimes for the better, by the influence of the game 

 type, or by careful selection for egg or meat qualities, or by good 

 care, and sometimes for the worse by indifferent breeding and 

 neglect, but almost invariably lacking in distinctive characteristics. 

 Of this character, according to accounts, are most of the fowls 

 throughout western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe 

 to-day,, and there is no evidence that they have ever been different. 



Laying breeds. Along the Mediterranean Sea the fowls present 

 a general uniformity of type not so noticeable elsewhere on the 

 continent of Europe. The type is not only uniform but is more 

 simple than the other European types to be considered, the more 

 elaborate modifications of superficial characters in some of the 

 Mediterranean breeds familiar to modern poultry keepers having 

 been developed in breeds of Mediterranean derivation in north- 

 western Europe. As developed in Italy and Spain the so-called 

 Mediterranean fowls were, and still are, very like what would 

 naturally be developed from an initial type (such as has been 



