1850. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
229 
Fig. 175 —Great Malay Foivl . 
ent, first, on the ground that he never borrowed 
plaintiff’s kettle; second, that it was broke when he 
borrowed it; and third, that it was not broke when 
he carried it home. 
Suppose some of those half-bred pheasant fowls, 
which are of such “ frequent occurrence,” should 
be “ paired with the pheasant or with the fowl,” 
and an offspring should be produced—a result which 
Mr. Browne admits has been realised. The proge¬ 
ny from the second cross with the fowl, would be a 
fourth pheasant, and that from a cross with the oth¬ 
er parent would be three-fourths pheasant. There 
are abundant means of showing that this has been 
done, to say nothing of Mr. B.’s tacit admission of 
the fact, and is it unreasonable that fowls so bred 
should be called pheasant fowls? On the contrary, 
is it not much more proper to apply the term phea¬ 
sant to such fowls, than to those which it is ac¬ 
knowledged have no more blood of the pheasant, 
than the Cochin-China fowl has of the ostrich? 
With another example of Mr. Browne’s mode of 
“ changing language,” we will leave these Phea¬ 
sant Malays. Dixon speaks of the avidity with 
which these fowls are purchased in England; Mr. 
Browne speaks on the same subject, and the lan¬ 
guage of the respective authors, is given in the fol¬ 
lowing extracts: 
Extract from Mr. Dixon. 
“-the buyer readily piys 
bis money down, thinking he has 
got a nice fowl and a taste of 
pheasant into the bargain—some¬ 
thing like the Frenchman, who 
was delighted at breakfast, on 
finding he was eating a little 
chicken, when he had. only paid 
for an egg.” 
Extract from Mr. Brovme. 
u -the buyer readily pays his 
money down, thinking that he has 
got a nice fowl, and a taste of 
pheasant into the bargain—some¬ 
thing like the Paddy, who was 
delighted at breakfast, on finding 
he was ‘ ating a little hen,’ when 
he had only paid for an egg.” 
We come now to the Game fowl, placed by Mr. 
Browne, ostensibly on the basis of the “ serrated 
upright comb,” the sixth variety from the type; yet 
in none of the varieties thus far named, except the 
Spanish, is the comb so uniformly single, serrated 
and upright, as in the Game. 
In regard to the origin and affinities of the game- 
fowl. Mr. Browne adopts the singular language of 
Dixon, viz., that “it approaches nearer to the Ma¬ 
lay and Pheasant-Malay, than to any other variety 
of fowl.” That the game-fowl bears a resemblance 
to what is called the “Pheasant-Malay,” is, as be¬ 
fore intimated, not unlikely; but it is plain from 
Dixon’s work—notwithstanding this strange com¬ 
pounding of terms—that the Malay and Pheasant- 
Malay do not resemble each other. Mr. Dixon 
Fig. 175 —Game Fowl. 
gives a communication from Mr. A. Whitaker, whom 
he considers “ accurate authority,” in which it is 
said—“They [the Pheasant-Malays] have no re¬ 
semblance to the Malay, except that the cocks 
are rather high on the leg, the hens being the re¬ 
verse.”* The absurdity of the idea of the near re¬ 
semblance of the game-fowl with the breed known 
as the Malay, and which Mr. Browne figures as 
such, is obvious to those who are well acquainted 
with the different varieties of fowls, and may be ap¬ 
parent to all, by a comparison of the accompanying 
cuts. 
Fig, 173, is the Javanese Jungle fowl, (Gallus 
bankiva of Temminck;) fig 174, Sonnerat’s Jungle 
fowl, (G. sonneratii, Temm.;) fig 175Great Malay 
fowl, (G. giganteus, Temm.,) (and is the same fig¬ 
ure that Mr. Browne gives for the Malay;) fig 176 
Game fowl. The three first of these are given as 
representations of fowls still found wild in the south¬ 
ern part of the Asiatic continent, or in the islands of 
Sumatra, Java, &c. They are considered by natu¬ 
ralists distinct races, though capable of interbreed¬ 
ing and producing a mixed stock which may be per¬ 
petuated. There are some other wild stocks, which 
it is not important to notice here. But if the ori¬ 
gin of the game fowl is to be referred to one of 
these, the question of course arises, with which has 
it the greatest affinity of characters? Without oc¬ 
cupying space with particular descriptions, it 
will be seen, merely by reference to the figures, that 
it must have required a “fertile imagination” to 
discover that the game cock “ approaches nearer 
to the Malay than to any other variety of fowl!” 
As well might it be said that the fiery and swift¬ 
footed Arabian courser, “approaches nearer” to 
the huge and slow-moving Flemish or English 
draught-horse, than to any other variety”’ 
The “free use” which Mr. Browne makes of 
the writings of others, is exemplified more or less, 
in all parts of the book, but in this chapter on the 
game fowl he has even saved himself the trouble of 
“changing the language”—having copied verbatim 
to a large extent, from the works of Martin and 
Dixon, with no mark of credit whatever; though he 
has condescended, in the same chapter, to attach 
quotation marks to extracts from anonymous wri¬ 
ters. 
As we proceed, we find Mr. Browne describes 
what is commonly known in this country as the Bol- 
* Dixon’s Ornamental and Domestic Poultry p. 312. 
