2G0 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
scraping together a few leaves on the ground by way of nest. She remains as part 
of the cock’s seraglio until some seven or ten or a dozen eggs have been deposited 
in the above spot, to which she stealthily repairs every day, and finally quits her 
party and retires alone and unseen to perform the duties of incubation. The 
chicks are hatched, as usual, in about twenty days, and follow the mother soon 
after they have emerged from the eggshell ; and she leads them about, teaching 
them how to find their own sustenance, till they are big enough to shift for them- 
selves, by which time the young cocks, finding that they cannot in honour come 
within a few yards of each other without a battle, separate, each one taldng a num- 
ber of hens with him. These particulars I have gathered from native informants ; 
but I can add from my own experience that either the season of incubation is 
uncertain, or that the hens lay in the cold weather with no more ulterior views 
than the domestic birds, for both in February and in March I have heard them 
emit that peculiar caclde, “ Tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-takauk ! ” by which, every one knows, 
a hen in a farm-yard proclaims to the good housewife a fresh acquisition to her 
larder. 
The flesh of the Jungle fowl, under favourable circumstances, is the most de- 
licious of all game, but that of the old cock is beyond human powers of mastication. 
A young bird hung till moderately high can hardly be distinguished in flavour 
from the pheasant. The pugnacity of the male is as great in its wild state as in 
domestication, and affords ready facilities for its death or capture. The Burmans 
and Talaings pin down a tame cock or tether him by the leg in some spot 
frequented by wild poultry, when his cries soon attract a knight errant of the 
tribe either within range of a gun, or the grasp of snares thickly set round the 
decoy. 
As may be supposed, the Burmese and Arakanese, gamblers from childhood, 
are well versed in the mysteries of cock-fighting. They do not clip the birds, as 
the promoters and followers of this amusement in England do, but give them the 
full benefit of their plumes, and arm them usually with but one steel,” a tre- 
mendous weapon, in shape and size like a large penknife, and which generally 
proves fatal in a very few rounds. The great mass of the poultry in Burma and 
Arakan is of the Game breed, descended from Gallus femigineus, but having 
acquired in process of time yellow legs and great increase of size. 
Though the voice of the Jungle fowl has no pretensions to melody, it possesses 
great variety of intonation and expression. The crow of the male is too well 
known to require description. The cry is a challenge to combat, doubtless, but 
at the same time is regularly periodical, the inclination to “crow” coming upon 
the bird apparently every three hours — that is at the commencement of every 
fresh watch, a division of time descended from remotest antiquity. When the 
cock has discovered some food, which he considers might be acceptable to the 
members of his harem, he calls them to the spot with a deep, soft clucking, 
similar to that which the hen employs to feed her young, picks up and lays down 
the morsels before them, and while they are greedily feeding; struts about with 
