PREHISTORIC ORIGIN OF THE COMMON FOWL. 3 
Although ancient literature is so disappointing, ancient art 
abounds with reliable contemporary information of the Fowl, 
and it is hard to explain the ignorance of such authors as the 
one quoted above. The British Museum collections of Greek, 
Roman, Pheenician, and other antiquities are very rich in por- 
traits of the cock. We see admirable groups of cocks fighting ; 
cock and boy playing together ; cocks and hens feeding; cocks 
being pursued by Panthers (surely this suggests that they were 
more or less wild) ; cocks being offered as sacrifices, or carried 
in the hands of the old gods. The student unable to examine 
the British Museum collections will find many excellent illustra- 
tions in such books as H. B. Walters’s ‘Terracottas in the 
British Museum,’ and ‘Catalogue of Bronzes in the British 
Museum’; B. V. Head’s ‘ Coins of the Ancients,’ &c. 
It is a curious fact that the figure of the Cock does not make 
its appearance in Greek art until the seventh century B.c.—at 
least, we have not been able to find undoubted portraits of the 
bird. In the earliest Mycenewan pottery (from about B.c. 3200 
onwards) animal forms are unusual, and generally too crude to 
be identified. When the Cock appears in the art of the Eastern 
Mediterranean it does so in company with traces of Oriental 
influence. This might suggest that the bird was introduced 
from the Kast at the same time, but there is more reason to 
believe that the art and not the subject-matter of the art was 
imported. It must be remembered that these early portraits 
of the bird are undoubtedly drawn from life (as in fig. 5 on 
p- 9, which is copied from a vase found near Athens), and the 
variety of compositions in which we find it pictured, and especi- 
ally its connection with religious and mythological subjects, 
hardly agree with the possibility of the creature being a novel 
introduction. 
We have not been able to measure the full importance of 
the Cock in Persian history. Aristophanes makes one of his 
characters say (‘ Birds,’ 1. 506) :—‘‘ There is proof that in former 
days birds were the kings of men; first I will produce the Cock, 
who ruled Persia before the days of Darius or Megabazus, and 
still from that archaic rule he is called the Persian Bird.” It 
seems likely, indeed, that the appearance of the Cock in western 
art had some connection with the influence of Persia. Aristo- 
B2 
