Wed, Jan 2, 1991

Dear Bill:

Its been a long time since I’ve heard from you. In fact I think since you kindly put a review of my book in an Australian Magazine, for which I thank you.

This summer I ran across what I perceive a interesting story on the African goose. I enclose a copy and a picture not my best but you get the idea.

My work on the Muscovy continue. New information coming in and perhaps more important better insights of my part.

But so much for me. What is new on the chicken origin front? I note that Veronica Mayhew has a copy of Finsterbusch, Cockfighting all over the world. Have you seen it? As I recall he postulated the existence of a now extinct giant fowl called Gigantus (or something like that) to account for the larger breeds of fowl.

I wish you good health and happiness in the New Year.

Sincerely,

The chinese origin  
of the so-called African goose

Comparison of the domestic brown Chinese goose with the wild swan goose of Asia, Anser cygnoides, suggests that the Chinese breed is merely a domesticated version of the now rare wild bird1. Both are remarkably alike in size, stance, and plumage pattern: a graceful brownish grey goose with a small head set on a long slender neck, black bill, orange legs and feet. Their distinctive color pattern is surely the most beautiful of all domestic geese. The dark brown crown on the head and hindneck contrasts with the pale brown of the throat, sides of head, and foreneck. In adults a narrow whitish band appears around the base of the bill. The sexes are alike in plumage color.

Notwithstanding these similarities, the absence of a frontal knob at the base of the upper mandible in wild Swan geese led Petrov to reject the idea of consanguinity of Swan and Chinese geese. Undoubtedly influenced by the fact that several Russian breeds of geese feature prominent knobs, he argued that the Chinese goose is a Russian variant of European geese and had therefore evolved from the wild Greylag goose, Anser anser.

Since then cytological descriptions of the chromosomes of Chinese and the Swan goose by Bhatnagar, 1968 and Belterman and DeBoer, 1984, respectively, prove that the Chinese goose is, in fact, a domesticated swan goose.

But, because the outrageously misnamed2 African is the largest variety of geese and the Chinese is the smallest and because the African features a prominent dewlap unlike either the Chinese or the wild Swan goose, the case for the Swan goose being the antecedent of the African goose has been less convincing. The common wisdom of poultry historians was expressed by the eminent Edward Brawn who believed that the Chinese goose had reached America by way of Africa, (to account for the name?), and that, in America, Chinese geese were crossed with the Toulouse geese to create the much larger African variety. Thus the African goose was considered a mix of Chinese and European geese.

Not true. The data of Silversides and coworkers, 1988, albeit indirectly, confirm that the African goose is, like the Chinese goose, descendant from the wild Swan goose. All three manifest a unique inversion of the fourth autosome not present in the karyotype of domestic geese descendant from the wild Grey Lag.

Having established the Swan goose as the progenitor of the African goose, the question remain, where indeed did this massive Chinese breed evolve? Certainly not in Africa where it is unknown to this day.

On my tripe to South China, I have been on the lookout for a native breed which might have been the original source. It has been a discouraging quest. Although small Chinese geese are ubiquitous in China, I found none as large as Africans. Any larger geese were always of an imported European breed.

At long last I have found a likely prospect! In the rural villages of Swatow, an area of South China with its own dialect and distinctive cuisine, there are small flocks of very large geese which pasture the verges of the small plots and country roads. Ganders can weigh as much as 12 kilos at 2 years of age. Their resemblance to the African goose in size, color and posture is unmistakable, (although admittedly somewhat lacking in refinement and the uniformity of color pattern of our modern Africans). These geese are called Tze Tau, lion head, an obvious reference to their large head and dewlap3.

The location of Swatow on the south China coast just across the Formosa Straight from Taiwan is significant because ships loading tea for the western world would have had ready access to these birds and yet would probably not have brought western geese there.

An original discovery? No, it is 150 years too late. In his The Domestic Poultry Book, (rarely mentioned by poultry historians), T.B.Miner quotes a letter dated December 13, 1852 from a Mr. Belcher of East Randolph, Massachusetts, USA, in which he describes large geese akin to our modern African geese4 and continues, "The breed that I own, was brought from Tchin Tchu, China." Tchin Tchu is the old spelling for modern Chuan Chow a seaport of Fukien a coastal province, Northeast of Swatow evidence that Tze Tau and Tze Tau geese are closely related if not one and the same breed.

This conclusion is inescapable. Not only is the African breed so distant from the wild Swan goose of Asia but its distinctive appearance indicates it was created in China by deliberate selection. Our so-called African goose by-passed that continent completely and arrived in the western world from China, looking much as they appear today.