[Illustration: Fig. 55. Single-Combed White Orpington hen. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)] =Frizzled fowls.= The feathers of a fowl are sometimes curled at the tips, like the short curls in the feathers which indicate the sex of a drake. Such birds are called frizzles or frizzled fowls. True frizzles, like true silkies from races having normal plumage, are very rare. Many of the fowls exhibited at poultry shows as Frizzles are ordinary birds the feathers of which have been curled artificially. =Rumpless fowls.= The tail feathers of a fowl are borne on a fleshy protuberance at the lower end of the spine. It sometimes happens that one or more of the lower vertebræ are missing. In that case the fowl has no tail and the feathers on the back, which in a normal fowl divide and hang down at each side, fall smoothly all around. True rumpless fowls are rare. Many of the specimens exhibited are birds from which the rump was removed when they were very young. =Bantams.= Dwarf, or bantam, fowls, on account of their diminutive size and pert ways, are especially attractive to children. Breeding them to secure the minimum size, the desired type, and fine quality in plumage color has the same fascination for a fancier as the breeding of large fowls, and as the small birds are better adapted to small spaces, fanciers who have little room often devote themselves to the breeding of bantams. The larger and hardier varieties of bantams are good for eggs and poultry for home use, but are not often kept primarily for these products. Most people who keep bantams keep only a few for pleasure, and the eggs and poultry they furnish are but a small part of what the family consumes. Bantam keepers who have a surplus of such products can usually find customers in their own neighborhood. The very small bantams and the very rare varieties are usually delicate and so hard to rear that amateurs who try them soon become discouraged and either give up bantams or take one of the hardy kinds. It is better to begin with one of the popular varieties, which are as interesting as any and, on the whole, are the most satisfactory. [Illustration: Fig. 56. White Cochin Bantam cockerel] =Origin of bantams.= After the explanation of the origin of varieties given in Chapter III, and the description of the evolution of the different races of fowls in the present chapter, it is perhaps not really necessary to tell how dwarf races of fowls originated; but the belief that such races were unknown until brought to Europe from the city of Bantam, in the Island of Java, is so widespread that it can do no harm to give the facts which disprove this and in doing so to show again how easily artificial varieties are made by skillful poultry fanciers. [Illustration: Fig. 57. Bantams make good pets]