360 LOTSY AND KUIPER. A PRELIM. STATEMENT OF THE RESULTS OF MR. 
shot in the jungle, this bird would unhesitatingly be admitted to the species 
bankiva. 
As it results from this, that domestic-forms of poultry, if their 
origin were unknown, could easily, but mistakingly, be determined 
as bankiva’s and as the origin of the cock of MR. HOUWINK is un- 
known, we must look among domestic poultry also for its identi- 
fication. The question then presents itself: can it be a domestic form 
pure et simple? I should, personally, exclude this possibility on 
account of the wild nature of all the descendants of the imported pair, 
which shows itself, up to the present moment in their behaviour; un- 
like domestic breeds which especially when they are, as is the case 
with our ,,bankiva’s’’, kept in small runs, where they see people con- 
stantly, become very tame, our , bankiva’s’’ are very unsociable ani- 
mals, keeping away from their attendant as much as they can. This 
seems to me considerable evidence for their having bankiva- or other 
wild blood in their constitution. 
Admitting this, the first question which presents itself, on account 
of the spangled-mottled condition of the feathers of the cock’s under- 
surface, can they be, or at least can the cock be, a cross of a 
spangled domestic breed with a bankiva ? 
According to LEFEVRE (see PAULA HERTWIG, Der bisherige Stand der 
erbanalytischen Untersuchungen an Hühnern, Sammelreferat Zschr. 
f. ind. Abst. u. Vererbungslehre XXX. 3. 1923 p. 198), spangling is 
dominant to the bankiva-type, so that our bird could, as far as its under- 
surface is concerned, be a hybrid between some spangled domestic 
race and a bankiva. As the hen, received with the cock in question, as 
a pair, shows no trace of spangling however, we would have to suppose, 
in that case, deliberate deception on the part of somebody through 
whose hands these birds passed, before Mr. HOUWINK got them, 
unless from a cross spangled X bankiva, hens very much like bankiva 
could segregate, which of course is, theoretically, possible. 
Efforts to trace the origin of MR. HoëwiNK’s cock, by means 
of its morphological characters — always a difficult thing to do — 
are hampered especially by the fact, that, according to BEEBE, wild 
bankiva-cocks frequently visit the native villages in British India, whe- 
re they cross with the native poultry and that we have no knowledge 
of the forms of domestic poultry, present in those villages. That do- 
mestic poultry of natives contains many forms, unknown to us in Euro- 




