Chap. VIII. EXTERNAL DIFFERENCES. 277 



but a case is given by Dr. Turral of the French sub-variety producing 

 young with some white feathers on the head and neck, and with an ochre- 

 coloured patch on the breast. 



Breed 2. Hook-billed Duck.— This bird presents an extraordinary ap- 

 pearance from the downward curvature of the beak. The head is often 

 tufted. The common colour is white, but some are coloured like wild- 

 ducks. It is an ancient breed, having been noticed in 1676. 3 It shows 

 its prolonged domestication by almost incessantly laying eggs, like the 

 fowls which are called everlasting layers. 4 



Breed 3. Call-Buck. — Bemarkable from its small size, and from the ex- 

 traordinary loquacity of the female. Beak short. These birds are either 

 white, or coloured like the wild-duck. 



Breed 4. Penguin Duck. — This is the most remarkable of all the breeds 

 and seems to have originated in the Malayan archipelago. It walks 

 with its body extremely erect, and with its thin neck stretched straight 

 upwards. Beak rather short. Tail upturned, including only 18 feathers. 

 Femur and meta-tarsi elongated. 



Almost all naturalists admit that the several breeds are 

 descended from the common wild duck (Anas bosehas) ; most 

 fanciers, on the other hand, take as usual a very different view. 5 

 Unless we deny that domestication, prolonged during centuries, 

 can affect even such unimportant characters as colour, size, 

 and in a slight degree proportional dimensions and mental 

 disposition, there is no reason whatever to doubt that the 

 domestic duck is descended from the common wild species, for 

 the one differs from the other in no important character. We 

 have some historical evidence with respect to the period and 

 progress of the domestication of the duck. It was unknown * 

 to the ancient Egyptians, to the Jews of the Old Testament, 

 and to the Greeks of the Homeric period. About eighteen 

 centuries ago Columella 7 and Yarro speak of the necessity 

 of keeping ducks in netted enclosures like other wild fowl, 

 so that at this period there was danger of their flying away. 



3 Will Q U o fVs . ' Ornithology,' by Mr. B. P. Brent, in < Poultry Chronicle,' 



hay p. 381. This breed is also figured vol. hi., 1855, p. 512. 



by Albm in 1734 in his • Nat. Hist, of « (Ward on the < Relation of Do- 



T 5 n n ' V -' ! a , mesticated Animals to Civilisation,' read 



F. Cuvier m Annales du Museum,' before the Brit. Assoc, at Oxford, 1860. 



torn ix p. 128, says that moulting and 7 Durea ude la Malle, in < Annales des 



incubation alone stop these ducks lay- Sciences Nat.,' torn. xvii. p. 164 ; and 



mg ' J^f^r^ 8 a similar torn. xxi. p. 55. Rev. E S. Dixon, 



vT'ifp 512 ^ e ' 1855 ' ' ~*tel Poultry,' p. 118. Tame 



5 pW -p fl ™™ t r» . , ducks were not known in Aristotle's 



™A rtl hV P H ?'n ° rnamental "me, as remarked by Volz, in his < Bei- 



and Domestic Poultry (1848), p. 117. trage zur Kulturgeschichte,' 1852, s. 78. 



