-HOUWINK’S EXPER. CONC. THE ORIGIN OF SOME DOMESTIC ANIMALS 5 
and cultivated districts, although shot frequently and suffering from the 
many enemies, such as snakes and small carnivores, which make life a 
burden for the village fowl in India, yet are constantly gaining recruits 
from the ranks of the domestic birds’’ Crossing with domestic fowl 
seems to be very general in British-India, so that BEEBE says in his „de- 
tailed description” 1. c. p. 207: 
Adult male. As I have emphasized in the course of narration of this 
species, the constant interchange of blood, the continued crossing of 
the wild Red Junglefowl with native birds, has brought an amount of 
variation in both habits and coloration which is unique, among phea- 
sants. The following descriptions of the birds refer to specimens which 
appear to be pure-blooded, from birds which were secured at a consider- 
able distance from human habitation”. 
This crossing with barnyard poultry however is not limited to Gallus 
bankiva, so that this argument in favour of bankiva being the only an- 
cestor of our domestic poultry carries no great weight. BEEBE himself 
says of Gallus lafayetti — the species limited to Ceylon — I believe that 
very rarely the wild Junglecock crosses voluntarily with the native 
poultry, and here and there hybrids resulting from such interbreeding 
are to be found in the native villages” and of Gallus sonneratil. c.p. 243 
he says even „While there is no doubt that the red species (bankiva) is 
the direct ancestor of all of our poultry, the rather close relation of the 
grey bird (sonnerati) is shown in the facility with which it crosses with 
the descendants of its generic relative. In the native villages of Kanara 
and elsewhere, it is not a rare sight to see hybrids which possess more 
or less perfectly the bright sealing-wax hackles of one parent, while 
they have inherited sufficient domestic instincts to induce them to re- 
main with the other inmates of the compound”. 
No wonder therefore that BEEBE’S opinion, that all poultry descends 
from Gallus bankiva only is not generally accepted. In his article on 
_l'Hybridisme dans la Genèse des races domestiques d’Oiseaux. Geneti- 
ca IV p. 364—374, Guici not only considers the possibility of the origin 
of our domestic poultry from hybrids between bankiva, sonnerati, and 
varius, but even suggests that in the promotion of races like Cochins 
and Brahma’s which lay darkbrown eggs a fourth species — now ex- 
tinct — may have taken part. Speaking of these large races, which he 
calls „des races hétérosomes’’, he says 1. c. p. 370 : 
„Les races hétérosomes, avec leurs petites ailes, disproportion- 
