The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 352: CHAP. 77. (56.)—THE BEST KINDS OF FOWLS.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 77. (56.)—THE BEST KINDS OF FOWLS.

The breed of a fowl is judged of by the erectness of the crest, which is sometimes double, its black wings, reddish beak, and toes of unequal number, there being sometimes a fifth placed transversely above the other four. For the purposes of divination, those that have a yellow beak and feet are not considered pure; while for the secret rites of Bona Dea, black ones are chosen. There is also a dwarf 3101 species of fowl, which is not barren either; a thing that is the case with no other kind of bird. These dwarfs, however, rarely lay at any stated periods, and their incubation is productive of injury 3102 to the eggs.