But since Menodotus has mentioned the guinea-fowl, we ourselves also will say something on that subject. Clytus the Milesian, a pupil of Aristotle, in the first book of his History of Miletus, writes thus concerning them—“All [p. 1048] around the temple of the Virgin Goddess at Leros, there are birds called guinea-fowls. And the ground where they are bred is marshy. And this bird is very devoid of affection towards its young, and wholly disregards its offspring, so that the priests are forced to take care of them. And it is about the size of a very fine fowl of the common poultry, its head is small in proportion to its body, having but few feathers, but on the top it has a fleshy crest, hard and round, sticking up above the head like a peg, and of a wooden colour. And over the jaws, instead of a beard, they have a long piece of flesh, beginning at the mouth, redder than that of the common poultry; but of that which exists in the common poultry on the top of the beak, which some people call the beard, they are wholly destitute; so that their beak is mutilated in this respect. But its beak is sharper and larger than that of the common fowl; its neck is black, thicker and shorter than that of common poultry. And its whole body is spotted all over, the general colour being black, studded in every part with thick white spots something larger than lentil seeds. And these spots are ring-shaped, in the middle of patches of a darker hue than the rest of the plumage: so that these patches present a variegated kind of appearance, the black part having a sort of white tinge, and the white seeming a good deal darkened. And their wings are all over variegated with white, in serrated,1 wavy lines, parallel to each other. And their legs are destitute of spurs like those of the common hen. And the females are very like the males, on which account the sex of the guinea-fowls is hard to distinguish.” Now this is the account given of guinea-fowls by the Peripatetic philosopher.
1 There is probably some corruption here.
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.
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