222 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
July 8. 
purposes; and the rector considers, according to recognised 
custom, that he is not liable to church-rates, and always 
j pays them under protest. 
Not so, Dr. Mavor. Once upon a time these rates being 
obstinately demanded, or something equal in money value 
insisted on, the Doctor said, “ seize the gun," and the gun was 
| seized accordingly. As a lawyer, he then set himself to 
work, and immediately the gun found itself again in its 
place, in the entrance-hall, which large old-fashioned apart¬ 
ment the Doctor would complacently pace, soliloquising 
aloud, “ Ah ! gun—gun ! so you are come back again. Ah ! | 
gun—gun! so I see you’re come hack again.” “ He’d a 
mighty knack of talking aloud to himself; and a wonderful 
man he was for studying, and was most always a writing,” 
said our informant, who lived with the Doctor many 
years. 
So great is the interest now prevalent in all that relates 
to our Domestic Eowls, and that interest is so likely to 
be productive of national benefit, that we shall devote 
the present and some future leading pages to a con¬ 
sideration of their history. We shall do this the more 
readily, because it will enable us to bring in succession 
before our readers the works of the chief writers upon 
the subject. 
It must have struck every one conversant with the 
Bible, that abounding as does the Old Testament with 
beautiful similes, yet not one is derived from the habits 
oi the domestic fowl. This may have arisen, as is 
suggested in one of the best books we have upon 
poultry, “ because tending them would be the occu¬ 
pation of women, whose domestic employments are less 
prominently brought forward by oriental writers than 
the active enterprizes of men;”* and this opinion is 
sustained by our knowledge, that the milder spirit 
commended and illustrated by our Saviour, made him 
select the brooding hen as the comparison to make his 
hearers feel most forcibly his anxiety to gather together 
and to cherish the Jewish people. In one of the apocry¬ 
phal books (2 Esdras, i. 30), there is the same simile, 
but there is great reason to believe that this book was 
written in the first century after the crucifixion. Not 
only is there an absence in the Old Testament of all 
similes derived from the domestic fowl, but even any 
mention of it is obscure. The only passage in which 
we think it is clearly referred to is in the 4th verse of 
the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes. It is there said that 
one of the habits of the aged, is that “ he shall rise up 
at the voice of the bird.” “ This,” says Dr. Parkhurst, 
“ appears to be the house-cock, at whose first crowing 
the restless old man is ready to quit his uneasy bed.” 
The same good Hebrew scholar considers also that when 
Nehemiah states “ fowls were prepared ” as part of his 
daily provision, during the Jewish Captivity in Persia 
[Nehemiah v. 18), that domestic fowls were intended, 
observing that these are still sold in the Aleppo 
markets. 
That the domestic fowl was well-known and fostered 
by the earliest nations of which we have record is 
certain, and we know not how it can be disputed that 
they existed before the Noahcliide Elood, for if they did 
not, it would be difficult to explain how they reached the 
Islands in the Pacific, where they were found to be 
abundant, when those Islands were first discovered by 
Captain Cook. Be this as it may, it is quite evident 
that they were in such great request in Egypt at the 
earliest time of which a faithful history is preserved, 
» Ornamental and Domestic Poultry, their History and Management. 
By tlie Rev. E. S. Dixon. Second Edition. 1850. 
that their eggs were hatched artificially. We know this 
on the authority of Diodorus Siculus, an historian who 
lived about half a century before the birth of Christ; 
that is about 1900 years ago. 
We have notices of the regard paid by the Grecians 
to domestic fowls at a period of more than four cen¬ 
turies earlier than that, and hy them they were con¬ 
sidered as particularly under the guardianship of Mars, 
their God of War. They were offered to him in sacrifice, 
and are so mentioned by Aristophanes, who flourished 
430 b.o. The crowing of cocks was considered an 
auspicious omen, for it was heard just previously to the 
victory of Themistocles over the Persians, 480 b.c., and 
he instituted an annual feast in consequence, and dis¬ 
tinguished it as the Alectrgonon agon, which may be 
Englished—The Cock Festival. The reason of the cock’s 
crowing being interpreted an omen of success was 
because he sits silent and moody when overcome, but 
struts and crows when he triumphs in his contests. 
The same superstitions influenced the Romans, a 
people of whose practice in husbandry, poultry-keeping 
inclusive, we possess fuller information than of any of 
the other of the ancient nations. Cato, the most 
ancient of their writers on such subjects, has a chapter 
on the fattening of fowls and geese, but passing on to 
another author, Columella, who lived a century later, 
namely, about the year 50 of the Christian eia, we find 
in his pages very full particulars concerning the Roman 
fowls and their management. These we shall extract 
with such comments and illustrations as they seem to 
require. 
“ The keeping of fowls is a usual occupation of the 
farmer. The kinds are either the poultry-yard, or the 
country, or the African. The poultry-yard fowl is a 
bird commonly observed at nearly every country resi¬ 
dence ; the wild fowl ( rustica ) is not unlike it, and is 
caught by the fowler; there are many of these in an 
island situated in the Ligurian Sea (on the coast of 
Italy), which the mariners, lengthening the name of the 
fowl, call Gallinaria.”* Of the African or Numidian 
fowl we shall take no further notice at present, as Colu¬ 
mella evidently intended by it that which we new know 
as the Guinea Fowl, Pintado, and Gallina. The females 
of the poultry-yard fowls are properly called hens ( gal¬ 
lina ), the males cocks ( galli ), and the half-males capons 
(capi). The profit arising from these fowls is not despi¬ 
cable, if skill be employed in bringing them up. For 
this skill many of the Greeks, and especially of the 
* From this passage we gather that there were then in Europe a wild 
species of the domestic fowl. Varro mentions the same island, but 
observes that the poultry upon it were, probably, the result of the common 
poultry-yard fowls, put upon the island by seamen during their visits. It 
deserves remark, that Juvenal mentions a wood near Cumae, in Italy, 
i called “The Poultry Wood ( Gallinaria sytva ).” 
