MODERN POULTRY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 20 October 1922, Page 7

MODERN POULTRY.

'" —-— +— DESCENDED FROM RED JUNGLE FOWL. ! The vast array of breeds and varieties or fowls which poultrydom embraces makes it exceedingly difficult for the uninitiated in poultry culture to realise that all these beautifully marked, laced and coloured and adorned fowls have been derived from one common ancestor, /the Red Jungle, or "Callus Pankiva" fowl of Northern India or Siam, which is not unlike an ordinary black red game fowl of to-day. If all domestic fowls were allowed to run wild and revert to the wild type, they would m a few years becomes similar in colour and style to their Indian jungle ancestor. Those who glance at the wellfilled pens of a poultry show express surprise at such breeds as those shown having descended from such a fowl, but Eastern history bears out■ ■ the fact,Domestic poultry, it must be remembered, flourished in China and India 3000 years ago, whilst Dorkins were the popular Roman fowl before the Christian era. Darwin, in his studies, has thrown much light on ancient poultry, and in 1868 mentions the following existing breeds: Cochins, Malay, Game, Brahma, Spanish, Dorking, Hamburgh, Polish, Bpnt^ms, and Silkies. Our resources, says the Daily i Telegraph, were, of course," considerably j strengthened by the more recent importations from China? of the useful ! Langshan, and the profitable trio of breeds for which Great Britain will ever be indebted to America, viz., the Plymouth Rock, the Leghorn, and the Wyandotte. The fowl, as we see it tof day, is the product of thousands of years, and some of those Eastern countries were poultry breeders in the widest sense at a time when Britain was the home of savages and America unknown •to Europe. There were evidently two pcreat streams of distribution from India—first, at least T4oo.years before , the Christian era to China, and subsequently to other Asiatic countries which at later periods was continued through Central Asia and South-eastern Europe; and, second, from India (600 1 8.C.) to Persia, and later to Greece, L Italy, and Western and Northern ' Europe, and ultimately to America and elsewhere.