December
26, 1987
Dear
Bill:
Well,
your opus arrived for Christmas. I can’t tell when it was sent because I don’t
know how Australians write the date, with the month or the day first. Anyway
you note enclosed was dated 10/9/87.
I
have read it several times. It’s a lot to digest and I must say you have put
in a lot of time effort and money. Good work.
I
don’t mind the occasional typos but I do wish you would supply a
bibliography.
I
note you do not include the paper by Vires’ J.B., 1939. The origins of the
European Dung hill cock Proceedings of the 7th World’s Poultry
Congress 437. I suppose those present considered him some kind of a nut but I
think you (and I) would at least consider his point of view. Perhaps you have
covered Ghigi and Houwink both in Jull’s book?
Who
is Willoughby whom I understand lived about 1670 and wrote a book about
chickens? Who was Temminck? Do you have Tegetmeier? If so what does he say
about Muscovy? Do you have a better reference to “Historia Natural” (page
20)?
I
have a lot of fun studies on the domestication of several animals and I would
have thought this is an natural extension of your work. I may have been a
professor once but I am very skeptical of the opinions of the so-called
experts who apparently never stir out of their chair to look at the bird. Also
the ones who mindlessly copy from a previous author without any attempt of
analysis or resynthesis of the ideas. There is a paper in Duck
Production by a Hertzel of Australia on domestication in ducks that is
pretty superficial. I wrote him what I hoped was a gentle letter but he
obviously does not want to be confused by the facts.
I’ve
been struck recently by the fact that ducks geese and quail remains are common
in some archaeological remains hut no fowl. George Carter contends that the
fowl was not used for food but for sport and ritual. I wonder if they might
not have been treasured most for use as an alarm clock? When I stay in
villages in Taiwan, I am always awakened by the crowing of the odd rooster
that someone has in their back yard.
Forgive
me if I have sent you the enclosed previously but I want to make the point
that I don’t think artificial incubation was invented to hatch chicken eggs.
All
the best for the new year.
A
relationship between
artificial incubation and domestication?
The
Egyptian tomb pictures show ducks and geese (and quail) but not fowl.
Likewise, study of the evidence from Tepe Ali Kosh in the near east, dated
7500 B.P., yields a long list of animals including ducks and geese,
partridge, but no pigeons or fowl. If these species were so important, was
artificial incubation developed to hatch the eggs of species less dedicated
to natural incubation than the fowl?
Wetherbee
wrote about coturnix quail: “It is ironic that this, the first bird
species domesticated by man, (The Mastaba Mereruka, Pt. 2 University of
Chicago Art Institute, Sakkarah Expedition, 1938), should only in the 20th century be recognized for its potentialities as a pilot species
for biological laboratory research.”
If
true, this contradicts the Japanese story that coturnix were domesticated as
a song bird only 800 years ago (the most recent instead of the first
domestication of domestic birds.) and his inference supports a reference by
Perez to the effect that artificial incubation was initially used more
successfully in China and Japan for the incubation of quail eggs than for
chicken eggs due to the shorter time required for incubation, 16 days, and
also because the particular conditions, humidity etc, obtained from those
methods of incubation were more suitable for quail eggs than for chicken
eggs. The Chinese and Japanese preserve even now according to Perez the
recipes for wood and barro (mud) required for the incubation of quail eggs.
Rather
than accept the speculation of Perez as to why artificial incubation was
more necessary for quail and duck eggs, I propose a more simple explanation.
Artificial incubation was invented to solve the problem of hatching eggs of
those species that were not dependably broody.
Contrary
to what we have presumed, the ancients (and artificial incubation is a very
ancient invention) would have felt the need for incubators to hatch duck and
quail eggs rather than chicken eggs. Slough nesting ducks are careless about
where they lay their eggs. Moreover, species vary in the inherent intensity
of broodiness from those that fail to breed at all in captivity to those
that lay eggs but fail to brood them and on to species that lay but brood in
a desultory way, to species like the fowl, most of whose breeds are
dependably broody and to species like the Muscovy which is tenaciously
broody.
Ducks
of most of our domesticated ducks don’t care where they drop their eggs
nor do coturnix quail.