December 26, 1987

Dear Bill:

Well, your opus arrived for Christmas. I can’t tell when it was sent because I don’t know how Australians write the date, with the month or the day first. Anyway you note enclosed was dated 10/9/87.

I have read it several times. It’s a lot to digest and I must say you have put in a lot of time effort and money. Good work.

I don’t mind the occasional typos but I do wish you would supply a bibliography.

I note you do not include the paper by Vires’ J.B., 1939. The origins of the European Dung hill cock Proceedings of the 7th World’s Poultry Congress 437. I suppose those present considered him some kind of a nut but I think you (and I) would at least consider his point of view. Perhaps you have covered Ghigi and Houwink both in Jull’s book?

Who is Willoughby whom I understand lived about 1670 and wrote a book about chickens? Who was Temminck? Do you have Tegetmeier? If so what does he say about Muscovy? Do you have a better reference to “Historia Natural” (page 20)?

I have a lot of fun studies on the domestication of several animals and I would have thought this is an natural extension of your work. I may have been a professor once but I am very skeptical of the opinions of the so-called experts who apparently never stir out of their chair to look at the bird. Also the ones who mindlessly copy from a previous author without any attempt of analysis or resynthesis of the ideas. There is a paper in Duck Production by a Hertzel of Australia on domestication in ducks that is pretty superficial. I wrote him what I hoped was a gentle letter but he obviously does not want to be confused by the facts.

I’ve been struck recently by the fact that ducks geese and quail remains are common in some archaeological remains hut no fowl. George Carter contends that the fowl was not used for food but for sport and ritual. I wonder if they might not have been treasured most for use as an alarm clock? When I stay in villages in Taiwan, I am always awakened by the crowing of the odd rooster that someone has in their back yard.

Forgive me if I have sent you the enclosed previously but I want to make the point that I don’t think artificial incubation was invented to hatch chicken eggs.

All the best for the new year.  

A relationship between
artificial incubation and domestication?

The Egyptian tomb pictures show ducks and geese (and quail) but not fowl. Likewise, study of the evidence from Tepe Ali Kosh in the near east, dated 7500 B.P., yields a long list of animals including ducks and geese, partridge, but no pigeons or fowl. If these species were so important, was artificial incubation developed to hatch the eggs of species less dedicated to natural incubation than the fowl?

Wetherbee wrote about coturnix quail: “It is ironic that this, the first bird species domesticated by man, (The Mastaba Mereruka, Pt. 2 University of Chicago Art Institute, Sakkarah Expedition, 1938), should only in the 20th century be recognized for its potentialities as a pilot species for biological laboratory research.”

If true, this contradicts the Japanese story that coturnix were domesticated as a song bird only 800 years ago (the most recent instead of the first domestication of domestic birds.) and his inference supports a reference by Perez to the effect that artificial incubation was initially used more successfully in China and Japan for the incubation of quail eggs than for chicken eggs due to the shorter time required for incubation, 16 days, and also because the particular conditions, humidity etc, obtained from those methods of incubation were more suitable for quail eggs than for chicken eggs. The Chinese and Japanese preserve even now according to Perez the recipes for wood and barro (mud) required for the incubation of quail eggs.

Rather than accept the speculation of Perez as to why artificial incubation was more necessary for quail and duck eggs, I propose a more simple explanation. Artificial incubation was invented to solve the problem of hatching eggs of those species that were not dependably broody.

Contrary to what we have presumed, the ancients (and artificial incubation is a very ancient invention) would have felt the need for incubators to hatch duck and quail eggs rather than chicken eggs. Slough nesting ducks are careless about where they lay their eggs. Moreover, species vary in the inherent intensity of broodiness from those that fail to breed at all in captivity to those that lay eggs but fail to brood them and on to species that lay but brood in a desultory way, to species like the fowl, most of whose breeds are dependably broody and to species like the Muscovy which is tenaciously broody.

Ducks of most of our domesticated ducks don’t care where they drop their eggs nor do coturnix quail.