TYPES, BREEDS, AND VARIETIES OF FOWLS 395 



most varieties of the European, but generally of inferior quality, 

 were (with good handling) quite as productive of eggs as any other 

 type. But the European fowls as a whole lacked the rugged vitality 

 of the Asiatics, and almost without exception had some superficial 

 feature to which the plainly practical American farmer objected. 

 On the other hand, the Asiatics were not only inclined to coarse- 

 ness in flesh, but were heavy-boned and much larger than was 

 desirable for general-market or necessary for laying purposes. 



Consequently (as stated in Chapter II) acquaintance with the 

 races of poultry as improved in Europe and Asia moved poultry 

 keepers in America to efforts to combine these different types with 

 one another or with native stocks in order to produce medium-sized 

 fowls of plain type, of great vigor, and adapted to a wide range of 

 conditions. While these efforts were greatly stimulated by the ex- 

 ploitation of the Asiatic type, that they began much earlier is evi- 

 dent from the references to the old Hawk-Colored, or Dominique, 

 fowls, and from the fact that at least two breeds (the Bucks County 

 Fowls and the Jersey Blue), formed by combining Asiatic and 

 native blood, had acquired a name and a more than local reputation 

 before the first exhibition in 1849. 



Early gray-barred types is the most appropriate general descrip- 

 tion of the color prototypes of the Barred Plymouth Rock. The 

 color type is a common one, the patterns occurring in all races in 

 which (or at the stage when) plumage colors are various. Fowls of 

 this color pattern went by different names. They were sometimes 

 described as hawk-colored. They were called Dominique, and also 

 by several variations of that name, — Dominick, Dominiker, Domin- 

 ican. They were called, too, Cuckoo Fowls. In many cases these 

 names were given on account of color, without reference to other 

 points (just as later every barred fowl was called a Plymouth Rock), 

 but it is quite probable that some of them were of a race with 

 other characteristics somewhat fixed. Some early American writers 

 on the Dominique say that it was introduced from France. As the 

 best type shown in illustrations of the period conforms generally 

 to the description of the French Cuckoo, it seems highly probable 

 that that race was the most important factor in fixing the type of 

 the American Dominique, and that the American Dominique is 

 no more American than the Leghorn or the Cochin. 



