Chicken × Rabbit

From Marinette [County, Wisconsin (the town of Peshtigo is in Marinette County)] comes the “wooliest” story on record. Last summer it seems a hen strayed away from a farm yard. The other day the hen appeared with a brood of chickens, which, as they grew older, took on a most peculiar appearance. Instead of down giving place to feathers, fur appeared, the chicks ate grass instead of grain and had four toes instead of three. The rabbit-chickens for so that are called, finally died. One has been stuffed, however, and is on exhibition at Peshtigo and will be exhibited to the State Medical Society. The only feathers to be found on the freak are at the tips of the wings, and it is not an easy matter to detect them, as they are more hair than feathers. From the wings back the body is very long, and is devoid of any tail whatever. The two feet which it possesses are exactly like the fore feet of rabbits, having four toes and being entirely covered with hair, which nearly hides the small claw at the end of each toe. The man who owns it is charging an admittance fee to the people who are anxious to view the strange creature.

A freak chicken has been discovered at Marion.^‡ A Plymouth Rock, otherwise perfectly formed, has the head of a rabbit.

According to the observations of de Réaumur, a silkie chick was produced by a chicken who had copulated with a buck rabbit.^†

When the celebrated de Réaumur allowed a buck rabbit to mate with a hen and produce offspring, the eggs were transformed so that the chicks that hatched out, although very similar to those of a chicken, lacked feathers and were instead covered with hair.^‡

The whole town of Paris was some years ago full of amours far stranger than those of a duck and a cock, viz., of the amours of a hen and a rabbit. The Abbe de Fontenu…informed the academy of sciences of what passed in the house of his brother, where he lives, between a hen and a rabbit: he informed them of the strong inclination which this ill-sorted couple of animals had contracted for each other, and which was such that the rabbit behaved with the hen as he would have done with his doe, and the hen let him take as much liberty with her as she would have allowed to a cock. The academy judged this fact to be one of those which ought never to be credited, unless it is certain that they have been seen by a discerning eye. The Abbe de Fontenu is one of that sort: but he did not assert the copulation of the rabbit with the hen upon the testimony of his own eyes, he only attested it upon the report of all the servants in the house; as the coachman, the footmen, the cook, and others, all of them not much used to make observations, who pretended they daily saw in a yard where the rabbit and the hen lived together, things which the Abbe de Fontenu was not near enough to observe from the window of his study. I no sooner had hinted to him that I would be very curious to have the hen and the rabbit in my possession to assure myself with my own eyes of the reality and the degree of the liking they had taken to one another, but his kind disposition towards me, of which I am very proud and of which he has given me many proofs, made him promise me without the least hesitation that the two animals would be at my house the very next day.

The rabbit and the hen were accordingly brought to me the day after, which was the twenty-fourth of June: I lodged them in a place where I could conveniently often observe them without interrupting them: it was in a wardrobe which is behind my study and in which I could see all what passed without entering into it. This wardrobe has a large, pretty low window which looks into my garden. They seemed to me perfectly indifferent to each other to the twenty-eighth of June, and it is likely the change of place had disconcerted them and taken up all their thoughts: on that very day at about half an hour after five in the morning, I saw the rabbit draw near the hen, placing his body along one of her sides a moment after, having his hinder paws on the ground, he jumped with the agility of a rabbit, and put the fore-part of his body on the back of the hen, part whom he laid hold of with his fore-paws, at the root of both her wings; he next drew the lower part of his belly as near as possibly he could to the hen’s hinder parts, and gave that part of his body small quick motions, the intention of which was plain enough. He was not allowed to remain in that posture but a very short time. The hen was not disposed to answer his caresses: his forelegs were but a little folded, she went forward and escaped from him.

On the twenty-ninth, I observed no courting on the part of the rabbit, I say of the rabbit, for the hen always behaved like a modest hen; but on the thirtieth, and at half an hour after five in the morning as before, I began to observe the same scene I had beheld on the twenty-eighth which was repeated several times. The rabbit had just eaten a lettuce leaf after having rubbed his paws one against the other, and wiped his chops with them. He went to his hen, and was no sooner by her, but he swiftly jumped with the fore-part of his body on her back; but before he could have time enough to hook himself upon it, the hen escaped the embrace: she was just then in the middle of the small room and ran under a chair The amorous rabbit followed her thither and notwithstanding the cross-bars of the chair-frame, which rendered the compass which the hen was within very narrow, he found means to lay his fore-paws on her back; she escaped a second time from him, and kept quite close to the wall of the window clapping one of her sides against it. The rabbit directly took advantage of a position in which it was become more difficult for the hen to escape him, he quickly jumped upon her: she shewing the same desire to resist him, and the projection of the window not leaving her liberty enough to fly away, she had recourse to force, she turned her head to peck the lips of the rabbit three or four times, which he indeed took not for caresses, it having quite another aspect, so that he directly quitted his hold and went off: he nevertheless paid a little more for his coaxing, and the hen pecked his forehead three or four times more. Her attacks calmed his passion. He remained quiet by the hen, and even let her go from him without following her, and went himself about the room. About half an hour after, the rabbit having eaten a lettuce leaf seemed to have forgot the ill-usage he had met with; he drew near the hen again, and repeated his tender pursuits, which she seemed not more disposed to comply with than before. He in vain was able to mount her three times running, she never would permit his continuance in that position: to get rid of him she got upon a pretty low stool, he was there almost as soon as she, and made new attempts that were not more successful than those he had made when she was on the ground.

The rabbit gave over pursuits which had availed him so little, and remained quiet for about an hour after which his tender fits came on him again; about seven o’clock, he went up again to the hen who had clucked a little before but not very loud: she was in the middle of the room when he placed the fore-part of his body upon her back with a new ardour; he perhaps found means then to hook himself better there than he had done hitherto, or perhaps the hen had no longer the same disposition to run from him: she nevertheless made a few steps forward, but slowly, and with her legs somewhat bent. The amorous rabbit kept his hold and remained where he was, but then the moment of her being conquered was come; she squatted herself as all hens do, which after having run away from the cock, consent at last to admit his caresses; she let the rabbit put himself in what position he pleased; he left his two hinder-paws on the ground, and laid his body all along the back of the hen, whose tail was removed to the left side by the pressure of the thighs of the rabbit; the hen in short became a perfect doe to him; he remained active upon her four or five times longer than a cock would have done.

But was the copulation as complete as that of a hen with a cock, or of a rabbit with a doe? This I indeed know not: all I know is that what passed between them proved sufficient to cool the rabbit: he not only let the hen alone for above two hours together, but he even seemed to want nothing but rest. He passed these two hours upon the above-mentioned low stool, perfectly motionless, and without changing his place.