16 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



migrations and his occupation of strange lands. The 

 carniverous diet of the dog is one main cause of this 

 pre-eminence. But search where you will, except in 

 the very highest latitudes, you will find in New Zea- 

 land, Australia, the American continents, the West 

 Indies, and in islands innumerable, fowls sharing in 

 the possession and settlement obtained by man. As 

 we approach the poles, difficulties arise in the way of 

 their further companionship. In Greenland, they are 

 occasionally kept only as curiosities and rarities. And 

 Sir Wm. Hooker tells us that poultry of all kinds is 

 quite unknown to the Icelanders, except that a few are 

 now and then conveyed to the country by the Danes, 

 who are obliged; at the same time to bring with them 

 a sufficient supply of necessary food, that is, grain, for 

 their support, of which the island furnishes none. 

 Fowls, however, would get on very well with a fish 

 and meat diet with grass and vegetables, assisted by 

 a little imported corn, were there sufficient induce- 

 ment to make the inhabitants take pains about their 

 maintenance. 



But the most mysterious, though not the most 

 ungenial localities in which fowls have hitherto been 

 found are the islands scattered over the vast Pacific 

 Ocean. How they got there is as great or a greater 

 puzzle than to divine the origin of their human popula- 

 tion. The earliest discoverers found the people to be 

 possessed of pigs, dogs, and fowls, all domesticated for 

 the sake of being eaten. 



The domestic fowl was found in the Sandwich 

 Islands by their first discoverer, although seldom used 

 by the natives as an article of food ; and, according to 

 tradition, it has existed there as long as the people, 

 and it is supposed they came there with the first colo- 

 nists by whom these islands were settled, or that they 

 were created by Taarva, at the same time that their 

 men were supposed- to have been made. 



This account would assign an unfathomable anti- 

 quity to the domestication of fowls, confirmed by the 



