The eggs are of a good size, and of a rich buff or
brown color, which are much prized by the numerous
epicures who believe that this hue indicates richness
of flavor—a fact which has not yet been made sensible
to my own palate. The chicks are at first very strong,
with “yellow legs, and are thickly covered with light-
brown down; but, by the time they are one third
grown, the increase of their bodies has so far outstripped
that of their feathers, that they are half naked about
the back and shoulders, and extremely susceptible of
wet and cold. 7

“The hens are sometimes employed to hatch the eggs
of turkeys, a task for which they are well adapted, in
every respect but one; that is, they will follow their
natural instinct in turning off their chicks at the usual
time, instead of retaining the charge of them as long
as the mother turkey would. Goslings would suffer
less from such untimely desertion.
With regard to the kulm fowl, the jago fowl, (im-
properly called the “St. Jago fowl,” from the suppo-
sition that they came from an island of that name, one
of the Cape Verds,) and the Cochin-China fowl, may
be looked upon as so many domestic off-sets, not
uncrossed with others, of the Gallus giganteus, of
Temminck. And here, let it be remarked, that in the
jago fowl, so famous for height and weight, the comb,
both of the cock and hen, is large and often double,
added to which there is sometimes a crest of feathers.
40 THE DOMESTIC FOWL.
