FOWEY, or a borough t. on the s. coast of Cornwall, on' the right bank of the river Fowey, 25 m. s.s. w. of Launceston. It is sheltered by hills, and lies amid pictur esque scenery, rude sea-cliffs, and promontories. The harbor admits large vessels at all states of the tide, and its entrance is guarded by three forts, The chief business is catching and curing pilchards, which, with " china-stone" and iron-ore, form the main exports. F. sent 47 ships and 770 men to the siege of Calais by Edward III. in 1347. It was burned by the French in 1457, and taken by Fairfax in 1646. Pop. '71, 1394.
FOWL (Ger. vogel; allied to the Lat. root fug-, to flee, and perhaps to wag-), a. word originally synonymous with bird, and still employed in that signification, but also in a much more restricted sense, as the designation of the genus of birds (gallus) to which the common domestic F. (G. dom,estieus) belongs. This genus gives its name to the important order of gallinaceous birds, also called, from their well-known habit of scrap ing the earth in search of food, rasores (Lat. scrapers); and is included in the family phasianida, with pheasiints,.tragopans, etc.. The• general form, and the characters of the bill, feet,. etc., agree with ilibse of the pheasants; but the croWii of the head is gen erally naked, and furnished with a fleshy comb, the base of the lower mandibles also bearing fleshy lobes or wattles, characters which are most conspicuous in the males; and the tail is very different from that of the pheasants, and, indeed, very singularly formed, being composed of fourteen feathers in two nearly vertical planes, or us if a horizontal tail were folded together, so as to make a sharp angle at top, the two middle feathers being the uppermost, and in the mates elongated beyond the rest, and gracefully arched. The tail-coverts of the male are also very ample, and the feathers of the back of the head and of the neck are either elongated and loosely webbed, forming the hackles, so much valued by anglers for dressing artificial flies, or are otherwise modified to serve the purpose of adornment; characters which are also sometimes exhibited in a very inferior degree iu the female sex. The legs of the male are armed with spurs, as in the pheasants, of which much use is made in the combats of these birds among themselves, all of them being very pugnacious. They are all polygamous, and unable to endure the presence of a rival. They are all natives of the East Indies and of the Malayan archi pelago. From what country, and at what period, the domestic F. was originally introduced into Europe, is uncertain. The remains of Egyptian antiquity carry us back to a period when it was apparently unknown in Egypt, and there is no distinct allusion to it in the Old Testament; but it seems to have been common in the s. of Europe from the earliest ages of European civilization. The cock was sacred to Apollo, to Mercury, to Mars, and to LEsculapius. It was figured on Grucian and Roman coins and gems; it was highly valued for its courage and pugnacity, and the sport of cock-fighting was a favorite one both with the Greeks and the Romans, as it is amongst the Chinese, the Malty's, and many other nations at the present day, and in former times was amongst all classes of society even in Britain. See COCK-FIGHTING. The domestic F. appears to have been known to the ancient Britons before the Roman invasion; and when the South sea islands were first visited by Europeans, it was it und there in the same domesticated state, and there also cock-fighting was found to be a fashionable amuse ment of the savage natives. The native country of the domestic F. is not certainly
known, nor is it certain what the species is in its original state. The ancient Greeks sometimes called it the Persian bird, and hence it has been supposed to be a native of Persia; but there is nothing else to support this opinion, and it seems likely enough that this appellation may at most only indicate its introduction into Greece from Persia. The jungle.F. of India, the first species of gallus known in its wild state to naturalists, was for some time supposed to be the origin of the domestic F., but to this opinion there are strong objections in the very peculiar character of some of the feathers which dis• tinguish the jungle F., and of which no trae ever appears in the domestic F. More recently, the bankiva F. and other species have been discovered in Java and other islands of the eastern archipelago, more nearly resembling the domestic F., and the distribution of the latter through the islands of the Pacific ocean is lavorable to the belief that it derived its origin from that region; but still the identification of the spe cies remains difficult, and some naturalists incline to the opinion that the domestic F. may be derived from-intermixture of distinct wild races. • The BANKIVA. F. (G. bankiva), native of Java, is extremely similar to some of the domestic varieties; indeed, sir William Jardine says: "Many bantams so nearly resem ble this bird, that there would be great difficulty in making a distinction. The comb is large and lobed, or dentelated; the colors are brilliant, steel-blue and chestnut, black and yellowish brown, the hackles abundant and golden orange; some parts of the plumage exhibiting a very fine play of colors. A very similar species, or a variety of the same, but rather larger, is found in some parts of continental India." Very similar also is the BRONZED F. (G. ceneus), found in Sumatra, a bird resplendent in metallic green, purple, and lake; but of which the comb has the upper margin unbroken; the wattles are combined into one attached to the center of the throat; and the neck feathers do not assume the hackle character, which appears in the neighborhood of the tail alone. These peculiarities also belong to the FORK-TAILED F. (G. furcatus or Javanicus), species very abundant in the jungles of Java, and often to be seen on their outskirts, nearly 2 ft. in length -from the tap of the bill to the extremity of the tail. A still larger species—if, indeed, these are not rather varieties than species—is the GIGANTIC F., JAGO F., or KELM F. (G. giganteus) of Sumatra, with double wattle under the throat, abundant hackles on the head, neck, and upper part of the back, green and red dish yellow the principal colors, and the height considerably more than 2 feet.—The JUNGLE F. (G. sonneratii), abundant in the higher wooded districts of India, where it is much sought after by European sportsmen, is about equal in size to an ordinary domestic F., but is more slender and graceful in its 'form; the comb of the male is lhrge, and its margin broken: the colors are rich and beautiful; but a remarkable pecu liarity is exhibited in the hackle feathers, which are terminated by flat horny plates of a golden orange color, into which the shaft expands, or the shaft thickening and termi nating abruptly gives rise to a battledore-like stem and disk, in substance like the tips of some of the feathers of the wax-wing.