72 FANCIERS’ 
JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by JosePH M. 
WADB, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 
Q 
Savrome J OURNAL AND 4q OULTRY (Fxonanes, 
/ 
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DAVENPORT POULTRY CLUB. 
AT the annual meeting of the Davenport Poultry Club, 
the other evening, the re-elected President, Rev. E. Miller, 
read the following paper on the History of Domestication 
of Fowls. It is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the 
best, paper on the subject extant, and is filled with knowl- 
edge, humor, and good sense. It will interest everybody. 
This is the age of organization. The great thinkers and 
doers that anciently stood in isolated grandeur above the 
low plane of the uneducated masses, did great things by 
means of authority. But since the masses have become more 
intelligent, equal and free, organization, instead of authority, 
holds the sceptre that concentrates the-efforts of the people. 
Organization, at once the exponent of equality and power, 
has also become a modern propensity. Two men can scarcely 
go fishing or hunting, nowadays, without articles of incor- 
poration, and pigs are fatted and colts trained according to 
constitution and by-laws. Coal-miners wield the pick, and 
boot-blacks ‘* put on the shine,” under the auspices of State 
and national conventions. Literature, art, and science do 
duty for melons, potatoes, and onions. History and philos- 
ophy solemnize the nuptials of labor and capital; and the 
lay of the poet and the lay of the hen blend in the strains 
of modern classics. 
The propensity to organize is justly gratified in the organ- 
ization of ‘The Davenport Poultry Club,”’ inasmuch as it 
seeks to give utility and taste to the recreations of its mem- 
bers. It is fitting, too, that the literature of this body 
should contain a history of poultry domestication. 
The earliest valid point of such history is cotemporary 
with Plato and Aristotle, 350 years before the Christian era. 
There are, nevertheless, many allusions in sacred history, 
that, assisted by probable argumentation, lead us to think 
that poultry became domesticated at a much earlier date. 
The passage in Ecclesiastics (12:4) probably refers to cock- 
crowing as ‘‘the voice of the bird.”” And in 1 Kings (4: 28) 
the phrase ‘‘fatted fowl’’ must refer to domestic fowl of some 


kind. Job, who was probably cotemporary with Jacob, 
refers (88: 86) to instinctive intelligence; and according to 
the Latin translation, instances gallainaceous fowl as its 
embodiment. (‘Quis posuit in Viscerabus sapientiam, vel 
quis didit galls intelligentiam.’’) 
Passing backward along the course of emigration into 
Persia, to the ‘first families” of post-diluvian civilization, 
we find a man, the oldest son of Japhet, and first grandson 
of Noah, bearing the name ‘‘Gomer.’’ This name, accord- 
ing to Hebrew scholars, is borrowed from the poultry-yard, 
and is the name of the veritable ‘‘cock that crew in the 
morn” during the dark and lonely wanderings of the ark. 
But we may support this probability with a theory never 
before, to our knowledge, advanced, viz.: That the divisions 
of time are based upon periodic phenomena of nature; and as 
the seasons first indicated the year, the moon suggested 
months, the sun gave night and day, nothing could have 
suggested the watches and hours except the crowing of the 
cock. The apparently indiscriminate application of the 
term ‘hour’ to watches of 180 minutes, and hours of 60 
minutes, sometimes occurring in the New Testament, fur- 
ther evinces that the crowing was the basis of these time 
divisions, since this crowing takes place at intervals of 180 
minutes from 6 o’clock until midnight, and of 60 minutes 
thence till dawn. Now if we inquire of the ancients as to 
how they came by these smaller time divisions, we get no 
reply, except that Heroditus says the Greeks obtained them 
from the Babylonians. And if we look into sacred history, 
we find the first mention of ‘‘hours”’ in the Book of Daniel, 
speaking of events in the city of Babylon. Daniel and other 
Jewish captives were the first Jews to use the term hour, 
and they doubtless learned this time division during the 
captivity. 
But the first settlements of the sons of Noah were in the 
country of Babylon, and at an early date the families of 
Japhet emigrated to the Greek Archipelago. These built 
houses and cities; were men of manufacturing and commer- 
cial habits, and not only found great use for the minor time 
indicator, but in the stability of their dwellings, leisure for 
the domestication and care of fowls ; while the roving life of 
the tribes of Shem and Ham precluded the society of poultry, 
though it utilized the camel, sheep, kine, &e. The presump- 
tion exists, that nearly all of our domestic animals and birds 
were in the domestic state during the life of Noah, if not 
much earlier. j 
Passing downward to the Greeks, Romans, and Jews, 
very common and familiar mention is made of domestic 
poultry. The peacock, guinea-fowl, goose, and hen were 
common among the Greeks. Four hundred and fifty years 
before the Cbristian era, cock-fighting, which had been a 
common pastime in Greece and India, was adopted by the 
Romans. Christ referred in the most familiar way to the 
‘hen gathering her brood under her wings.’’ And while 
the theologians ‘‘kept the key of knowk dge,”’ he taught the 
people the tenderness of his compassion by this well-under- 
stood illustration. And when he warned Peter of his fall, 
he designated the time by the ever reliable instinct of the 
feathered chronometer. 
As the game-cock was both a source of amusement, for 
fighting, and a reliable indicator of the night watches, it is 
easy to believe he accompanied the Roman armies to France 
and England. The first record of cock-fighting in England 
is that under Henry II; it was practiced by school-boys on 
Shrove Tuesday, but afterwards it became a favorite amuse- 
