ids of the same parentage were not quite so sterile: Mr. Dixon, as
he informed me, made, with Mr. Yarrell's aid, particular inquiries on
this subject, and was assured that out of 50 eggs only five or six
chickens were reared. Some, however, of these half-bred birds were
crossed with one of their parents, namely, a Bantam, and produced a few
extremely feeble chickens. Mr. Dixon also procured some of these same
birds and crossed them in several ways, but all were more or less
infertile. Nearly similar experiments have recently been tried on a
great scale in the Zoological Gardens with almost the same result.[375]
Out of 500 eggs, raised from various first crosses and hybrids, between
_G. Sonneratii, bankiva_, and _varius_, only 12 chickens were reared,
and of these only three were the product of hybrids _inter se_. From
these facts, and from the above-mentioned strongly-marked differences
in structure between the domestic fowl and _G. Sonneratii_, we may
reject this latter species as the parent of any domestic breed.

Ceylon possesses a fowl peculiar to the island, viz. _G. Stanleyii_;
this species approaches so closely (except in the colouring of the
comb) to the domestic fowl, that Messrs. E. Layard and Kellaert[376]
would have considered it, as they inform me, as one of the
parent-stocks, had it not been for its singularly different voice. This
bird, like the last, crosses readily with tame hens, and even visits
solitary farms and ravishes them. Two hybrids, a male and female, thus
produced, were found by Mr. Mitford to be quite sterile: both inherited
the peculiar voice of _G. Stanleyii_. This species, then, may in all
probability be rejected as one of the primitive stocks of the domestic
fowl.

Java and the islands eastward as far as Flores are inhabited by _G.
varius_ (or _furcatus_), which differs in so many characters--green
plumage, unserrated comb, and single median wattle--that no one
supposes it to have been the parent of any one of our breeds; yet, as I
am informed by Mr. Crawfurd,[377] hybrids are commonly raised between
the male _G. varius_ and the common hen, and are kept for their great
beauty, but are invariably sterile; this, however, was not the case
with some bred in the Zoological Gardens. These hybrids were at one
time thought to {235} be specifically distinct, and w