File:Our domestic birds; elementary lessons in aviculture (1913) (14562441707).jpg

Identifier: ourdomesticbirds00robi_0 (find matches)
Title: Our domestic birds; elementary lessons in aviculture
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Robinson, John H. (John Henry), 1863-1935
Subjects: Poultry Pigeons Cage birds
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Ginn and company
Contributing Library: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library
Digitizing Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library

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t upon the movements of the human race than thedistribution of the fowl. Wherever at any time in the history ofthe world male and female wild Mallards happened to be caughtand kept in captivity, a domestic race might be developed. Amissionary who went to Africa in 1885 and wrorked among theBakubas — a people more than a thousand miles from the westcoast of the continent — reported that he found there such littlemongrel fowls as are common elsewhere in Africa, and a local 128 OUR DOMESTIC BIRDS race of domestic ducks varied in color as are the common ducksof Europe and America, but as large as the Rouen and Pekinducks. The Bakubas had had so little intercourse with civilizedpeoples that it was not at all likely that an improved race ofducks had been introduced from the outside world, and whateverpossibility of that might be supposed to exist, the fact that theducks of this country, like the domestic quadrupeds, were dumbindicates that they are a distinct and very old domestic race.
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Fig. 123. Colored Muscovy Ducks. (Photograph by E. J. Hall) It is worth noting in this connection that the missionary,Dr. William H. Sheppard, found it the accepted opinion amongthis savage people that, by a process of natural selection, thecharacter of dumbness had been acquired by the domesticanimals, to which it gave a measure of protection from wildenemies in the forest around them. It seems wonderful thatthe theory of evolution was found out by such people beforeit was developed by modern scientists. DUCKS 129 The common duck. Like the ordinary mongrel fowl, the com-mon duck (sometimes called the puddle duck, because, when itcannot find water elsewhere, it appears to be perfectly satisfiedwith the filthiest puddles) is much the same in all parts of theworld and is a very inferior bird in comparison with ducks of theimproved races. Common ducks are usually very slow growersand weigh at maturity from three to four pounds each. As arule they are very indifferent layers, laying only

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