[Sca-cooks] It's DUCKS ;-)

[Gretchen Beck]

The Runner Duck association's (www.runnerduck.net) webpage suggests that 
they were imported into Europe from India (Bombay to be exact), but that 
their origins are ultimately Balinese:

Origins

One of the most famous naturalists of the nineteenth century had a good 
idea where they came from:



Alfred Russel Wallace The Malay Archipelago  (1856)

The islands of Bali and Lombock, situated at the east end of Java, are 
particularly interesting. They are the only islands of the whole 
Archipelago in which the Hindoo religion still maintains itself?and they 
form the extreme points of the two great zoological divisions of the 
Eastern hemisphere; for although so similar in external appearance and in 
all physical features, they differ greatly in their natural productions.

* * *

>From Bali quantities of dried beef and ox-tails are exported, and from 
Lombock a good many ducks and ponies. The ducks are a peculiar breed, which 
have very long flat bodies, and walk erect almost like penguins. They are 
generally of a pale reddish ash colour, and are kept in large flocks. They 
are very cheap and are largely consumed by the crews of the rice ships, by 
whom they are called Baly-soldiers, but are more generally known elsewhere 
as penguin-ducks.


toodles, margaret