jungle-fowl of India. This bird is dark-red in color, sleeps in low trees, and roosts night after night in the same place. It nests on the ground, and the female has the habit of cackling when she has laid an egg--a rather strange practice for a bird. Polygamy prevails. The males are exceedingly pugnacious, and sing to the sunrise as their town-dwelling descendants do the world over today.

Domesticated chickens have many ways of acting which can be understood only by a knowledge of the ways of their ancestors. Those ways are not exactly vestigial, that is, they are not useless, but many of them probably never would have been originated at all if chickens had always lived in the conditions they now live in. The wild chickens (jungle-fowls) had them because they were useful. The domestic chickens have them merely because they have been presented to them.

Domestic chickens make their nests on the ground, not in trees as most birds do. They follow their ancestors. But they sleep in trees, either real or artificial, not on the ground as ducks and geese do. Chickens also have the habit of sleeping night after night in the same place, like the jungle-fowl. Take young chickens and put them to rcost in a certain place two or three times and they will roost there of their own accord after that.

The domestic hen hides her nest. She also has the instinct, when she has laid an egg, to announce

the fact by cackling. It looks as tho these two instincts would in practice have the effect of counteracting each other. And they do in civilization. But we must remember in seeking explanation for the instincts of domesticated animals that these instincts were for the most part laid down in the natures of these creatures in circumstances very different from those which surround them today. The hen as a wild bird laid her eggs in a secret nest and cackled, long before there were any beings as intelligent as men on the earth.

It has been supposed that the running and cackling that the hen indulges in when she leaves her nest is a trick which she used to lure the fox from her nest. The fox would follow the hen and forget the nest. The dove and the partridge employ tricks of this kind to lure enemies from the vicinity of their nest. And this probably is the explanation of the noisy flight of the hen when she is disturbed on her nest.

The cackling and flight which a hen indulges in when disturbed are probably a different performance from the ordinary cackling of the hen after laying an egg. I notice that when the hen cackles the rooster cackles too. And it may be that this duet has in the wild state the purpose of announcing the location of the two individuals to each other. Wild chickens live in families, each composed of a single male and several females. The male is very jealous of his wives and very loyal to them. He regards himself as their natural lord

and protector. When a member of his family has retired to her nest and announces by her cackling that she no longer has occasion to be alone, the male cackles in response to let her know where to find her family, which in the meantime would often have drifted some distance away. I have noticed that the male is more or less nervous and anxious on these occasions; and cackles generally to members of his own family only, not to members of neighboring families.

12. Miracles to Come.

The most advanced breeds of the domestic chicken have almost entirely lost the nest-hiding instinct, which is so strong in their wild ancestors. They have also extended their egg-laying to all seasons of the year. The domestic fowl is a bird. In the wild state it has the common practice of wild birds of laying a nest of eggs in the spring and hatching them, and then laying no more till the next spring. But by selection breeds have been developed in which egg-laying is continual.

Cows have been induced to prolong the milkproducing period in the same way. If we continue to hatch eggs by artificial hens and to select for breeding purposes those more intent on egg-laying, we may develop hens after awhile that will lay continually the year around, and without any inclination to set or cluck or hover over their young. It would be possible also to develop cows in which the milk-producing function were independent of the act of becoming mothers.

Domestic Selection, in both animals and plants, is in its infancy. Only those with the souls of seers can even dream of the miracles that are destined to be wrought by man on himself and by man on the races associated with him, in the ages that are yet to dawn on this globe. Man has already made spineless cactuses, and green roses, and seedless oranges, apples, grapes, bananas, and pineapples. And in the same way he can, if he wants to, and will set his mind to it, develop mustard seeds as big as marbles, and sheep with hair like silk, and cows that do nothing but give cream the year around.

13. Cliff-dwellers with Wings.

I wonder how many of those who have associated with pigeons have ever thought why these birds do not light in trees and do not build their nests in trees, as birds usually do, instead of in artificial apartments created by man.

There are something like 200 different varieties of the domestic pigeon. They have all come from the rock-dove, a bird which makes its home among the sea-cliffs of Europe. The rock-dove is not a tree-haunting bird. It perches on rocks, and builds its nest in the clefts of the rocks. The domestic pigeon builds its nest in a man-made cave because its ancestors were cliff-dwellers and built their nests in rock-clefts. It prefers the house-top to trees, because a house-top or gable is a more satisfactory cliff than a tree.

If the pigeon had been domesticated in America instead of in Europe, it would have had for its ancestor the wild pigeon which once lived in such numbers in the forests of eastern North America, the so-called passenger pigeon. Then, it would have been a haunter of the trees, and been a very different being from the cooing cave-dweller who today lives among the artificial fastnesses of our streets and barnyards. It would have built its nest in the trees, and slept in the trees, and had the instinct to migrate. The rock-dove is not a migratory bird, and hence domesticated pigeons have no tendency to migrate. But if the domesticated pigeon had come from the American wild pigeon, instead of from the European, it would have had the migrating instinct, and it would probably have been necessary to make it flightless in order to keep it from flying away in the fall, as we have done with the domesticated geese and ducks.

14. Wild Survivals in Hogs.

The domestic hog came from the wild boar of Europe, the western breeds, anyway; those of China and the East probably being descended from the wild pig of India, a different species. In the wild state these animals live in small droves or societies, and feed on roots and bulbs, which they unearth with their short, powerful proboscis. Wild hogs are polygamous in their family relations. Like their not very distant relative, the rhinoceros, they are swamp-loving animals, root