Dear Sir

I hope that the following brief account of some chickens of the black boned variety of the common fowl may interest you,—¹

I procured a cock and hen of the pure breed and carefully isolated them. Both were perfectly white. The hen laid 11 eggs, and hatched 11 chickens about a month ago.— Of these 11 chickens 3 have died. Eight were living this morning. The first plumage of these eight (of all of them) is pure white. I do not mean the down, which was white also, but the feathers.— Six of them are decidedly of the black-boned variety, with black eyes, skins, and mouths, i,e, the roof the mouth.— The other two are in no way distinguishable from ordinary fowls with white plumage. The three that died were also of the black-boned kind.— As I am quite sure that the parent birds were isolated, and that no other eggs were introduced, I cannot account for the the difference between the nine and the two chickens— The natives tell me that for the hen of this variety to hatch chickens of both descriptions is an ordinary occurrence, but then, they never take any pains to keep the hens & cocks of this breed separate from other fowls.— If my account is correct, and I am pretty sure it is, of the isolation of the parent birds, and non introduction of any other eggs, it would seem that this blackboned variety is not a distinct species.—

I requested our mutual friend M^r. Thwaites to inform you that I had often seen, & had had on my table, black boned fowls with plumage not only not white but differing quite as much in colour as in ordinary fowls.—²

I left the breast bone of one of these blackboned fowls in a spot in my room where the common red ants could easily get at it, and in three or 4 days the apparently perfectly black bone was quite white— The ants had eaten the membrane which covered the bone, and thus proved that the black colour was not in the bone itself—

Believe me | Yours faithfully | S. O. Glenie

P.S. I had almost forgotten to send you an extract from a letter lately received from M^r. Holdsworth the naturalist employed by the Ceylon Govt to examine their Pearl Banks— M^r Holdsworth is well known, I believe to Mess^rs Gosse & Huxley.³

“There is a curious habit among both Singalese & Tamils not strictly belonging to M^r. Darwin’s questions, but interesting, because undoubtedly natural and universal.⁴ You may be familiar with it. It is, when beckoning to any one, the movement of the hand forwards and downward instead of upwards and backward, as is the practice among Western nations. I do not know how general in India the custom is, but it undoubtedly obtains among the Malabars.⁵ Also in pointing to an object the hand is not directed definitely towards it, but the outstretched arm is raised quickly above the head through a perpendicular line cutting the object   I was much bothered with this mode of pointing when I first went into the jungle with natives. I often found myself looking among the treetops for what was close to or on the ground   Can you give me any explanation of these customs?—

As far as my observation extends both these modes of beckoning and pointing are the common modes of the people here.— I do not know, nor can I even guess, why they differ so much from Europeans in these matters, which, after all are only two amidst a very number of customs in which they differ from Occidentals.—

S. O. Glenie