PREHISTORIC ORIGIN OF THE COMMON FOWL. 5 
given to the historian Diodorus Siculus, who has left us a long 
account of Egypt, in which he mentions (Biblio. bk. i. vi.) the 
methods of artificial incubation in use in the country during his 
own times (circa B.c. 60). He says they ‘‘keep poultry and 
geese, but, not content with the ordinary way of breeding,.... 
force the young out with their hands with so much art and skill 
that it is done as effectually as by Nature herself.” Sir J. G. 
Wilkinson, in his charming but absonant ‘ Ancient Egyptians,’ 
accepts Diodorus without any hesitation, and he discusses at 
some length this business of artificial incubation, which is still 
flourishing in Egypt to-day. Both Greeks and Romans were 
peculiarly careless observers of biological subjects, and, although 
no doubt the old Sicilian was correct in the main, we do not wish 
to build on this evidence alone, more especially as he gives us 
no facts whatever concerning times before those in which he 
lived. 
Tn later times, when Egypt became more under the influence 
of the nations towards the north, the Cock becomes a frequent 
fisure in the alien art of the Delta, and we have seen many 
examples dating from about the sixth or seventh centuries B.c. 
Yet, on the other hand, Egypt must have influenced Kurope in 
return, for in the Gem Room of the British Museum there is a 
small jasper seal (taken from a seventh century B.c. grave at 
Tharros, in Sardinia, then a Pheenician colony) bearing the 
figures of two men in Kgyptian costume, a lotus plant, and a 
Cock. About 500 B.c. a boy playing with a Cock was a favourite 
subject with the artists in terracotta of the Greek and Pheenician 
colonies around the mouths of the Nile, but it is impossible to 
learn the exact root of the bird in these countries, for they were 
obviously open to the influence of many nations. 
The ancient hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians consists of 
pictures of animals, plants, and other objects ; their number is 
very large, and at least five hundred were in constant use. 
During the very earliest times these signs were nearly all quite 
recognizable portraits, but at last they became conventionalized 
characters, and finally lost their first significance. There 
was also an alphabet, and in this the sound of U or W was 
represented by the figure of a chicken (cf. figs. 3 and 4). 
Heinrich Brugsch in his great work on this ancient language 
