[Illustration:  Fig. 92.—­The Poulterer, drawn and engraved in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.]

Capons are frequently mentioned in poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but the name of the poularde does not occur until the sixteenth.

We know that under the Roman rule, the Gauls carried on a considerable trade in fattened geese.  This trade ceased when Gaul passed to new masters; but the breeding of geese continued to be carefully attended to.  For many centuries geese were more highly prized than any other description of poultry, and Charlemagne ordered that his domains should be well stocked with flocks of geese, which were driven to feed in the fields, like flocks of sheep.  There was an old proverb, “Who eats the king’s goose returns the feathers in a hundred years.”  This bird was considered a great delicacy by the working classes and bourgeoisie.  The rotisseurs (Fig. 94) had hardly anything in their shops but geese, and, therefore, when they were united in a company, they received the name of oyers, or oyeurs.  The street in which they were established, with their spits always loaded with juicy roasts, was called Rue des Oues (geese), and this street, when it ceased to be frequented by the oyers, became by corruption Rue Auxours.

[Illustration:  Fig. 93.—­Barnacle Geese.—­Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, from the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster, folio, Basle, 1552.]

There is every reason for believing that the domestication of the wild duck is of quite recent date.  The attempt having succeeded, it was wished to follow it up by the naturalisation in the poultry-yard of two other sorts of aquatic birds, namely, the sheldrake (tadorna) and the moorhen, but without success.  Some attribute the introduction of turkeys into France and Europe to Jacques Coeur, treasurer to Charles VII., whose commercial connections with the East were very extensive; others assert that it is due to King Rene, Count of Provence; but according to the best authorities these birds were first brought into France in the time of Francis I. by Admiral Philippe de Chabot, and Bruyerin Champier asserts that they were not known until even later.  It was at about the same period that guinea-fowls were brought from the coast of Africa by Portuguese merchants; and the travelling naturalist, Pierre Belon, who wrote in the year 1555, asserts that in his time “they had already so multiplied in the houses of the nobles that they had become quite common.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 94.—­The Poultry-dealer.—­Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, after Cesare Vecellio.]

The pea-fowl played an important part in the chivalric banquets of the Middle Ages (Fig. 95).  According to old poets the flesh of this noble bird is “food for the brave.”  A poet of the thirteenth century says, “that thieves have as much taste for falsehood as a hungry man has for the flesh of the peacock.”  In the fourteenth century poultry-yards were still stocked with these birds; but the turkey and the pheasant gradually replaced them, as their flesh was considered somewhat hard and stringy.  This is proved by the fact that in 1581, “La Nouvelle Coutume du Bourbonnois” only reckons the value of these beautiful birds at two sous and a half, or about three francs of present currency.