Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: hastily conceal themselves under the leaves or crouch in the hollows of trees and wait motionless until the danger is past. To get within gun-shot of these birds is well-nigh impossible, and to capture them one must have recourse to the same snares one uses for catching larks. A fowl smaller than a partridge, and that they catch in the woods with snares for larks, remarked Jules, ought to be a very pretty bird, but not of much use if raised in poultry-yards. Does our poultry come from such a small kind as that '' It certainly comes either from the Bankiva fowl or from other kinds just as small that live in a wild state in the forests of Asia; but when and how the hen and the cock became domesticated is wholly unknown. From the dawn of history man has been in possession of the barnyard fowl, at least in Asia, whence later the species came to us already domesticated. During long centuries, improved by our care, which assures it abundant food and comfortable shelter, the original small species has produced numerous varieties differing much in size and plumage. They are classed in three groups: the small, the medium, and the large. To the first group belongs the bantam or little English fowl, about the size of a partridge. It is a beautiful bird with short legs that let the tips of the wings drag on the ground, quick movements, gentle and tame habits. Its eggs, proportioned to the small size of the hen, weigh scarcely thirty grams apiece, while those of other hens weigh from sixty to ninetygrams each. These pretty little pullets are raised rather as ornaments to the poultry-yard than for the sake of their diminutive eggs. These little fowl, observed Louis, look from their size like the primitive kind. Yes, it was about like that they looked when man took it ...