Essays in Natural History
Chiefly Ornithology
By Charles Waterton, Esq.
Published by Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861
London,
The Rumpless Fowl
Pauca
me gallo...Vergil
A while ago I introduced the rumpless fowl to the readers of
Mr. J. C. Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, to show them that there are
birds who are just as brilliant and in such as good a condition as one which
has no oil gland to preen himself. This
being true, I drew the conclusion that birds are not in the habit of anointing
their plumage with the contents of the oil gland.
But whither the rump?
Buffon tells us in his natural history, that most of the
hens and cocks of Virginia were rumples and that the inhabitants affirm that
when tailed intermingle with the rumpless ones, they soon lose the rump. Monsieur Fournier assured Count Buffon [Comte
de Buffon} that when the rumpless one couples with an ordinary kind a half
rumped sort is produced i.e. that it has six feathers in its tail instead of
twelve; this Count Buffon relates is called the "Persian fowl".
Perhaps this is the case in eastern France? So I investigated this chimera, and
discovered that it is nothing more or less than the common barn door fowl and
that it can be produced by a male and female, both furnished with a rump and a
tail.
Two years ago, in the village of Walton, a common hen with a
rump laid 18 eggs under a hedge. There
was not a rumpless fowl in all the village or the adjacent country. The mowers were cutting the grass and the
poor hen was killed by a stroke of the scythe and two little chicks were all
that were saved. One of the mowers
brought them home and gave them to the lady that owned the hen and she brought
them up, male and female both.
Amazingly, the male was rumpless and without a tail. The female chick then hen was normal.
When the rumpless cockerel was fully grown I introduced it
to a rumpless hen, thinking that like should be with like. This rumpless hen laid 14 eggs and sat upon
them with great perservance; nothing happened.
Again during the course of the summer she tried again, and again the
same result. I felt sorry for her so I
gave her a tailed mate and they become a loving duet. She laid well the following summer, sat twice
still nothing.
So it would appear from these experiments that the rumpless
fowl is not prolific. But as Cervantes
tells us, one swallow does not a summer make so I tried again this time with a
woman notorious for rearing poultry. She
has the knack, they say. So I went to
Nanny and asked her about this. She said
she had gotten a pair of rumpless chicks from the Isle of Wight and that they
had reproduced and given her seven rumpless chickens but she could not get full
price for them as many customers thought them strange so she did not pursue the
endeavor as there was no money in it.
Count Buffon
{1707-1788}
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