h of red and
gold.

I dropped him and one of his hens with a right and left of "sixes" and
found that they were jungle fowl (_Gallus gallus_) in full plumage. The
cock was a splendid bird. The long neck feathers (hackles) spread over his
back and wings like a shimmering golden mantle, but it was hardly more
beautiful than the black of his underparts and green-glossed tail. Picture
to yourself a "black-breasted red" gamecock and you have him in all his
glory except that his tail is drooping and he is more pheasant-like in his
general bearing. The female was a trim little bird with a lilac sheen to
her brown feathers and looked much like a well-kept game bantam hen.

The jungle fowl is the direct ancestor of our barnyard hens and roosters
which were probably first domesticated in Burma and adjacent countries long
before the dawn of authentic history. According to tradition the Chinese
received their poultry from the West about 1400 B.C. and they are figured
in Babylonian cylinders between the sixth and seventh centuries B.C.;
although they were probably introduced in Greece through Persia there is no
direct evidence as to when and how they reached Europe.

The black-breasted jungle fowl (_Gallus gallus_) inhabit northern India,
Burma, Indo-Chinese countries, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippine
Islands; a related species, _G. lafayetti_, is found in Ceylon; another,
_G. sonnerati_, in southern India, and a fourth, _G. varius_, in Java.

We found the jungle fowl wild and hard to kill even where they were seldom
hunted. During the heat of the day they remain in thick cover, but in
cloudy weather and in the early morning and evening they come out into
clearings to feed. At our camp on the Nam-ting River we could usually put
up a few birds on the edge of the deserted rice fields which stretched up
into the jungle, but they were never far away from the edge of the forest.

We sometimes saw single birds of either sex, but usually a cock had with
him six or eight hens. It was interesting to watch such a flock feeding in
the open. The male, resplendent in his vivid dress, shone like a piece of
gold against the dull brown of the dry grass and industriously ran about
among his trim little hens, rounding up the stragglers and directing his
harem with a few low-toned "clucks" whenever he found some unusually
tempting food.

It was his duty, too, to watch for danger and he usually would send the
flock whirring into the jungle