January 21, 1985

Dear Mr Plant,

Reading your second part of the book about evolution, history and distribution of the domestic fowl, I have got a deep respect for your research on these subjects.

On page 9 of your book, you quote from the letter of Prof Carter and he mentioned the Dutch book of R.Houwink De Hoenderrassen  orThe breed of Fowl  as I translate the Dutch title. This book is well known here from libraries and collectors of old poultry books and the Dutch Poultry Association has a plan to re-edit the book, but the price will be very high, about 200 guilders, that is about 60 dollar now.

Houwink was a shopkeeper in colonial produce, a grocer. He was a poultry fancier like you and me without an academic training on the subject of his book (4 parts). But he had read all the books about it. He admired Darwin and also Mendel, whose laws on heredity were re-discovered in the first years of the century. In his book (1909) he quote all the older writers on poultry as Temminck (l817), Bechstein (1801), Aldrovandi (1600), Columella (2 b.C.) and many others. For your study the part of the fossil bones is important. So Houwink quotes Prof L.H.Jeitteless (Zool. Garden 1873):

"New research has proven that in the tertiary period species of fowl existed in Europe. In the younger period (quartary), the period of the mammoth, there were two varieties of a Bankiva-like fowl contemporary of people. Fowl in the latter stone period became extinct and in the tertiary period was introduced again. Poultry has been spread in prehistoric time from further India and China to Middle and East Asia. Poultry was  known as the Celts and Teutons long before the Roman empire was known and it came not to the Celts and the Teutons people via Italy, but direct from the Orient through South Russia Poland and Hungary, with the people when they were invading Europe."

Houwink also quote Victor Hehn’s book Culture plants and domestic animals in their coming from Asia (1902):

"There is a close relation between the languages of all old people and the names of domestic poultry. The Teutons call the chicken hana, all Teutonic tribes know this name. In Dutch haan (cock), hen (hen), hoen (fowl). Slavonians and Lithuanians have always lived apart from the Teutons they gave the chicken an other name."

Houwink writes that he visited the Museum of natural history at Leiden, and he found there a very large collection of the 4 well known wild jungle fowl with their skeletons, also several very important crossings of these 4 jungle fowls and crossings of the jungle fowls with domestic fowl of Java. So he could compare skulls and legs of wild Jungle fowl with crosslings and tamed Bankiva’s and fossil skulls and legs, which are described by Prof L.H.Jeitteless. He quotes:

"Gallus of the tertiary period. GALLUS BRAVARDI found by Bravard in volcanic tuff of Ardes near Issoire (France), Puy de Dome (Pliocene period) piece of a chicken leg. This Gallus variety stand in size between peacock and domestic fowl according to Gervais. It resembled much a leg of a tamed fowl. Gervais found earlier piece of a leg at Cadillac, not the same as Gallus bravardi.

"GALLUS AESCULAPII Phasianus Archiaci. From the Miocene period of Pikerni near Athens (Greece). Bull. Soc. Geolog.d.France 1862.

"Gallus of the Quartairy period. GALLUS FROM THE BELGIAN CAVES. Schmerling found in the caves in the surroundings of Luik (Liège) remains of domestic fowl among bones of extinct animals: elephants, bears, hyena’s etc. Size of a domestic chicken and a smaller one but same variety.

"GALLUS OF THE BELGIAN CAVES SMALL VARIETY. A.M.Edwards found in  the caves of Lhern (Ariège, France) among bones of bears, rhinoceros, foxes, a complete leg of a cock male, but a little shorter as a Bankiva male, but a little brooder. The spur was weak, seems to have been long. The leg resembles much the one Schmerling found.

"Gallus of the young Quaternary period. Dr P.Rütimeyer found in the pile-dwellings dated in the bronze age in Switzerland a leg of a cock male, at Morges at the lake of Geneva. Dr Rütimeyer believes that this fossil looks as from a younger age. Also were found chicken legs in the terremare and palafitte of Parmeci and in the terremare of S.Ambrogio, places almost equal to the pile-dwellings"

Palafitte = pile-dwelling, terremare = bottom or soil of a lake.

This was Houwink about the fossils of chickens in Europe found before 1909. It proves that in Europe there lived poultry in the time between the ice ages and the climate must have been tropical in that time.

Comparing the skulls of wild jungle fowl with species of skulls Darwin describes in one of his books, Houwink concluded that the skull of Bankiva of Darwin must have been a tamed Bankiva because it was larger as the skull of the wild jungle fowl. So far Houwink’s book.

It is worth mentioning that the late Van Gink, the famous poultry illustrator, sketched a part of the illustrations in Houwink’s book. Van Gink was very young when he did this, it was its start in this art, that he did his whole life, and of course his later illustrations proofed to be much better as his first work. Van Gink had a job at a bank at that time, but he resigned from the bank to be able to sketch full time. He studied poultry science and was a well known fancier and a poultry and pigeon judge. He wrote several books and was editor and writer of poultry magazines. In the Dutch standard of 1960 he wrote about the oldest Dutch breeds of poultry:

"The Drenthe fowl, being in the first years of this century almost extinct, are a part of the old European common fowl, together with the Frisians, Groninger Mew, East Frisian Mew, Hamburger, Campine and Ardenner fowl. From their origin is little known. First it was supposed, these old European fowl were the descendants of the Bankiva jungle fowl, tamed in East Asia and  via different routes come to NW Europe. Later research gave motive for the development of a theory that the European fowl are the tamed descendants in Europe living wild fowl, which are, in contrast to the Asiatic wild jungle fowl, totally  extinct since long. Further one goes more and more to the opinion, that the domestic breeds of poultry don’t are descended exclusively from the Bankiva and probably are descended from more different breeds of wild fowl.

"Crossings have proofed that the wild species are fertile among themselves. In form and statue as in type of feathering is little difference. Concerning colour and pencilling, there are certain resemblances and certain differences."

So far the text in the Dutch standard of Mr Van Gink.

I think we owe the large knowledge of jungle fowl in the Netherlands to the fact that Indonesia was for centuries a part of the Dutch Kingdom. The jungle fowl were studied at Java by Dutch scientists and all the knowledge is stored in libraries and Museums as in Leiden, the town with the oldest Dutch University.

We had 4 weeks of very cold weather with snow and ice and I am very glad that it was raining yesterday and now we can see the green grass again and I could open the chicken house this morning end let the birds out in the garden, I had to keep the birds in the house because of the strong freezing. The coldest night it was -24°C and this we don’t have for more as 20 years.

I do hope you understand the quotations from Houwink’s book and the quotation from the old Dutch Standard. There are countries or places where is it not possible to talk about the origin of life, people can believe the Bible and take this to the letter. I have a fellow-judge who wants not to talk about evolution, only about Creation. This must be the reason that there is not so much written about the subject, but there many proofs to believe other developments of the live on earth.

On your side of the globe it is summer now and we saw on TV, it is hot and it is burning there. I hope not in your surrounding. With a Friendly greeting.

Sincerely