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Updated: May 31, 2025
I even misdoubt much whether the less blackness of blackbird is for protection. Again, can you give me reason for believing that the merest differences between female pheasants, the female Gallus bankiva, the female of black grouse, the pea-hen, female partridge, have all special reference to protection under slightly different conditions?
If we may assume that these fowls, in their long, semi-independent existence in La Plata, have reverted to the original instincts of the wild Gallus bankiva, we can see here how advantageous the cackling instinct must be in enabling the hen in dense tropical jungles to rejoin the flock after laying an egg.
Both the pigmented skin of the Silky and the colour in the plumage of the bankiva are dominant, so that all the offspring in F1 or the first generation are coloured fowls with pigmented skins. But in later generations I found that with regard to skin pigment there were no pure recessives.
Withdraw the dominant inhibiting factor, and the colour shows itself. It is evident, however, that it is difficult to apply this suggestion to all cases. For example, the White Leghorn fowl must have descended from a coloured form, probably from the wild species Gallus bankiva.
The male, however, of the wild Gallus bankiva retains his neck-hackles for nine or ten months; and when these are cast off, the underlying black feathers on the neck are fully exposed to view.
The colour of the bankiva is what is called black-red, these being probably the actual pigments present, mixed in some parts of the plumage, in separate areas in other parts: the Silky is white. There are seven pairs of characters altogether in which the Silky differs from the bankiva.
To take one other example: there is nothing which was more insisted upon by Darwinians than the fact that all the various races of domestic fowl known to us came from Gallus bankiva, the jungle-fowl of India; in fact I think I have seen that form enthroned amongst its supposed descendants in more than one museum.
In several breeds of the Fowl, the down-covered chickens, the young birds in their first true plumage, and the adults differ greatly from one another, as well as from their common parent-form, the Gallus bankiva; and these characters are faithfully transmitted by each breed to their offspring at the corresponding periods of life.
The burnished red hackles, worn like a light mantle over the black doublet of the breast, the metallic dark green sickle-plumes arching over the tail, all the beautiful lines and rich colouring, have been absorbed into flesh and fat for gross feeders; and with these have gone its liveliness and vigour, its clarion voice and hostile spirit and brilliant courage; it is Gallus bankiva degenerate, with dulled brains and blunted spurs, and its hoarse crow is a barbarous chant.
I know that Gallus bankiva frequents drier and more open situations than Pavo muticus, which in Java is found among grassy and leafy vegetation corresponding with the colours of the two females.
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