RED JUNGLEFOWL 191 
motionless they were bits of the jungle floor mosaic of various pigments, lights and 
shadows, and with no tell-tale scents to betray them, were safe from all discovery during 
the absence of the mother. 
In the crop of a two weeks’ chick I found a bit of a scarlet earthworm, several small 
grubs, anda piece of grass blade. Beyond this I have no data as to the food of the 
young birds. Judging from the scratching proclivities of both sexes, I believe that 
insects form an important part of their food. As I know that the cocks share in the 
defence and feeding of the brood, it is reasonable to suppose that he roosts with them 
from the time when they are first able to flutter up toa limb. Certainly when they are 
half grown he is found with them or on a neighbouring branch every night. The 
dangers to which the eggs and very young chicks are subject are those which ever 
threaten ground-nesting birds; snakes, lizards, small carnivores, and other predaceous 
mammals, and the small, jungle-frequenting hawks and owls being the worst. 
RELATION TO MAN 
The details of the past and present relation which obtains between the Red 
Junglefowl through its descendants and mankind, could easily be elaborated into an 
entire volume of this monograph. In economic importance the domestic fowl takes 
rank with the cow, sheep and pig. Many accounts have been written on this subject, 
one of the best still being Darwin’s chapter published more than forty-five years ago. 
Sometime in the far distant past, exactly when we shall probably never know, some 
primitive race of mankind captured living Junglefowl and tamed them. The birds 
learned that intimate association with man ensured comparative freedom from attack 
by beasts of the jungle and a more or less regular supply of food. Certainly their lives 
are a great deal longer than among their wild kindred. There are records of domestic 
cocks twenty-four, twenty-five and even thirty years old. So in numberless races and 
varieties we find the domestic fowl as the companion of man distributed over the whole 
world, with the exception of the high mountains and the polar regions, where it is 
infertile, and, therefore, cannot be bred. It everywhere betrays its southern origin by 
its love for warm, sunny places, its dislike of cold, and the infertility in chilly regions 
above mentioned. The early history of mankind and the fowl, as far as we know it, 
I have detailed elsewhere. 
After the first domestication, and throughout succeeding years, during generation 
after generation, these tamed fowls of the jungle made three separate appeals to man. 
First, he reared them and found their flesh and eggs goodly food, and little by little 
learned to breed birds which either were large in size, and thus produced an unusual 
amount of flesh, or by selection, increased feeding, and in other ways brought about 
an enormously increased egg productivity. In the second place the natural pugnacity 
of these birds appealed to the primitive instincts of savage man, and many generations 
of him must have given much thought to the sport of cock-fighting to have brought 
into existence the specialized race of game-cocks with its peculiar structure and 
abnormal pugnacity. Thirdly, when the plasticity of form and structure of Junglefowl 
bred in captivity became evident through the variation of successive generations, the 
aesthetic side of mankind seized upon this as a sort of living, organic potter’s clay, and 
