With respect to barn-door fowl, originally introduced from India and Media into Greece, the greatest care appears to have been taken to vary and improve the breeds. For this purpose cocks and hens were imported[1110] from the shores of the Adriatic, from Italy, Sicily, Numidia, and Egypt, while those of Attica were occasionally exported to other countries. There appears to have been a prejudice against keeping more than fifty fowls[1111] about one farmyard, some traces of which may also be discovered in the practice of the Arabs.[1112] The fowl-house furnished with roosts,[1113] as with us, was so contrived and situated as to receive from the kitchen a tolerable supply of smoke, which was supposed to be agreeable to these Median strangers. The food of fowls[1114] being much the same all the world over, it is unnecessary to observe more than that the green leaves of the Cytisus were supposed to render them prolific. To preserve them from vermin, the juice of rue, by way I suppose of charm, was sprinkled over their feathers.[1115] The proportion of male birds was one to six. Hens were usually put to sit about the vernal equinox, during the first quarter of the moon, in nests carefully constructed of boards, and strewed with fresh clean straw, into which, as a sort of talisman against thunder, they threw an iron nail, heads of garlic, and sprigs of laurel.[1116] During the period of incubation, the eggs which had previously been kept in bran were turned every day. ----- Footnote 1110: Athen. vii. 23. Of these birds the black were esteemed less than the white. ix. 15. On the fighting cocks. Plin. x. 24. Æsch. Eum. 864, 869. Schol. ad Æsch. Tim. Orat. Attic. t. xii. p. 379. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 492. Footnote 1111: Geop. xiv. 7, 9. Footnote 1112: Arabian Nights, Story of the Ass, the Ox, and the Labourer, vol. 1. p. 23. Footnote 1113: Ταῤῥοὶ. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 227. Footnote 1114: Beans, however, were eschewed as they were supposed to prevent them from laying.—Geoponic. ii. 35. But cocks were suffered to feed on them, at least when they belonged to poor men.—Luc. Mycill. § 4. Footnote 1115: Dioscor. iii. 52. Footnote 1116: Geop. xiv. 7. 11. Colum. viii. 5. -----