"Barnyard" Fowls

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 12 (Supplement)

"Barnyard" Fowls

POULTRY originated from the wild jungle fowl of southeast Asia, whose descendants are there, unchanged, in the jungle and forests to this day.

They enter literature in a Chinese encyclopaedia published 1000 years before the dawn of Christianity. As early as that they were popular in India, not as the source of eggs and flesh for the table, but because, when in confinement, the male birds fought, and so provided sport for their owners.

If the history of the subject is correct, the Persians, invading India in the sixth century, 8.C., carried poultry back to Persia, whence the birds spread throughout Western Asia, and, it is supposed, reached those mighty travellers, the Phoenicians, by whom they were brought to Britain in exchange for Cornish tin and other merchandise.

Egyptians were supposed to have shared in the general distribution of the birds which were brought from India, by the Persians 2500 years ago, but nine years ago the portrait of a fowl was found in & Luxor tomb of about 4500 B.C.

Whatever their source, fowls were well established here when the Romans landed. Caesar tells us that the Britons had poultry, not for food, but for sport. Cock-fighting, an established institution then, lasted as a legalised form of brutal entertainment until the middle of last century. It is believed that the game birds kept for the purpose were descended from jungle fowls which, bred for fighting, were brought to this country centuries before Oaesar jwas born.