Engraving of the Cochin China Fowl kept by Queen Victoria at Windsor, by Samuel Read (1816-83), published on 23 December 1843 in The Illustrated London News (© Illustrated London News Ltd / Mary Evans, London)

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... mentioned, several decades after its description Temminck's giant junglefowl was generally considered to be a domestic form rather than a wild species. Dixon (1848: 176) stated: 'No ornithologist now ranks this bird as a distinct species.' However, in the 1840s several breeds of very large chickens were brought to England from the Far East ( Fig. 5; see Appendix 1). They caused a sensation among fanciers and naturalists because of their large size. Due to their unusualness, Temminck's giant junglefowl was yet again raised as the possible wild ancestor of these and other large breeds. For example, the French physician, botanist and geologist Dominique Alexandre Godron (1807-80) ...

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... 1843 Queen Victoria was presented with some very large chickens from the Far East by Edward Belcher (1799-1877): two cockerels and six hens (Anon. 1843). These tall, single-combed and smoothfooted birds (Fig. 5) were obtained by Belcher, an Admiral in the British Royal Navy, in Cochinchina (a French colony encompassing the southern third of modern-day Vietnam). They became known as 'Cochin' or 'Cochin China Fowl' in Britain. Despite their name, these birds were not the precursors of the large, fluffy and feathered-foot chickens now known as ...

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... recognised that the two 'giant fowl' specimens in the collection were domestic varieties, one might expect that large Asian chickens used for cockfighting would no longer confuse museum ornithologists. However, in 1879 the British Museum's bird curator Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847- 1909) described a new species of junglefowl based on a specimen (Fig. 15) collected by Frederick William Thomas Burbidge in the Sooloo Islands (modern-day Sulu archipelago, southern Philippines). Sharpe (1879) wrote: 'Mr. Burbidge procured a single example of this Jungle-fowl, which appears to be a very Figure 11. Specimen of Gallus giganteus NHMUK 1843.5.24.147 from 'India', purchased by the British Museum ...