CHAPTEPt XV. 
WIIITE-CRESTED BLACK POLISH FOWLS, 
NDER the title of Polish Fowls are included all those varieties characterized 
^ by the possession of a very largely developed crest of feathers on the head. 
Their history can he traced hack as far as the time of Ulysses Aldrovandi, better 
known under his Latinized name of Aldrovandus, a Bolognese gentleman, who was 
born in 1527, and died in 1605. Aldrovandus devoted his time to the pursuit of 
natural history, and exhausted his resources in collecting specimens and in the 
payment of artists and engravers. During his life, he published three folio volumes 
on birds ; and, after his death, several on other departments of natural history were 
published at the expense of the Bolognese Senate. Aldrovandus describes and 
gives figures of several varieties of fowls, as the Crested, a white fowl vith a lark’s 
crest; the Dwarf (Pumilio), a small breed of various colours, also crested ; the 
Feather-legged ; the Turldsh, with a double comb, and well developed wattles ; 
the Persian, with short legs, and an enormous double comb ; the Frizzled Fowl ; the 
Woolly Fowl, analogous to the Silky Fowl of the present day ; the Paduan, or 
Patavinian breed : these he describes as follows : — There are kinds of galli- 
naceous birds, larger than ours, which are commonly called Patavinians. We present 
pictures of the male and the female. The cock is exceedingly beautiful, being 
richly decorated with five colours, viz. black, white, green, red, and ochre ; the 
body black, the neck covered with white feathers, and the wings and the tail partly 
black and partly green ; the tail of the same hue, but the roots of the feathers 
vBiitish, and some of the flight-feathers also white. The eyes are surrounded 
by red circles, the comb is very small, the bill and feet yellow, and the head is 
adorned with a beautiful crest. In the hen there is no white, except the white 
pellicle at the opening of the ears. She is altogether of a greenish-black colour, 
with yellow feet, and a very small comb, slightly tinged with red.” 
The figures given in the old folio of Aldrovandus are of great size ; but, on a 
smaller scale, they are correctly reproduced in the opposite plate. In the time of 
Aldrovandus there were no poultry- shovv^s, and consequently birds v^ere often matched 
together irrespective of colour and form : we must not, therefore, be surprised that 
in the hen there are not any wattles, but merely a fulness of the neck feathers, 
tending towards a beard ; the cock, on the contrary, is v/ell wattled, and has abun- 
dance of siclde-feathers, or tail-coverts, though the tail itself is very short, which 
perhaps may be accounted for by the circumstance that he was probably a 
cockerel, being without even a trace of spurs on the legs. 
Q 2 
