412 
ON THE ORIGIN OF 
poultry in many of the islands of the Indian Archipelago ; 
and although Sonnerat, from an undue anxiety to establish 
the truth of his own opinion in favour of the jungle cock, 
has treated the sentiments of these writers as conjectural 5 
their value is not thereby diminished. It is now a well 
known fact, that wild poultry exist in most of the greater 
of the Asiatic Islands, and it is to one or two of these na- 
tive species that I now beg to direct your attention. 
According to M. Temminck, the species to which our 
domestic races are the most nearly allied, are, the Jago 
Cock of Sumatra (Gallus giganteus), a wild species, of great 
size ; and the Bankiva Cock of Java, another primitive 
species, which occurs in the forests of the last named island. 
There are several circumstances which render the claims 
of these two birds much stronger than that of the Jungle 
Cock. 1^^, Their females bear a strong resemblance to our 
domestic hens; 9.dlif^ The common village cock, in its 
most ordinary condition, is intermediate, in respect to size, 
between these two species ; The nature of the plu- 
mage, which, in its form, consistence and distribution, is 
absolutely the same as in the common cock, greatly 
strengthens the supposition ; Mhly^ It is in these species 
alone that we find the females, as well as the males, pro- 
vided with a fleshy crest and small wattles; — characters 
which likewise distinguish both sexes of our common poul- 
try, although they are, for the most part, but slightly de- 
veloped in the females. The female jungle cock possesses 
neither comb nor wattles. 
All gallinaceous birds, it may be remarked, are distin- 
guished by the facility with which the different species 
combine to form hybrids or mixed breeds. Thus the cock 
and the female pheasant, and more frequently the pheasant 
cock and the common hen, produce a mixed offspring; 
the different species of Flocco not only breed together in a 
