'A LITTLE ONPLEASANT DIFFERENCE." 



259 



from such material as was then available, 

 we presented sufficient reason for concluding 

 that Burnham's claims could not be regarded 

 as truthful statements, and were perhaps not 

 even meant as such. To have gone further 

 then (as we could have done even from 

 material then in our hands) would have seemed 

 ungenerous, as we did not know that any 

 parties to the old American controversy of 

 1850-55 were still alive. But Mr. Burnham 



made the fact that he was very 

 The Final much so, speedily evident by a 



Controversy. series of letters in all the poultry 



journals of America, during many 

 months of 1874, which he got together and 

 reprinted in a book called The China Fowl* 

 dated the same year, the style and tone 

 of which will be sufficiently shown by the 

 following brief specimens : 



I repeat it : I was utterly ignorant of the virulence, 

 the total falsity, the bitter misrepresentations, the 

 carping, silly, unwarrantable language you had adopted 

 towards nie in your two bool<s [the Brahma Fowl 

 and the Illustrated Book of Poultry are here re- 

 ferred to] until the last few weeks, when I, for the first 

 time, had access to these ignorantly composed and 

 miserably spirited volumes 1 Wherein have I ever 

 offended ^low, that you should thus in your books black- 

 guard, malign, vilify, and prate like a hen with a sore 

 head about Burnham this, and Burnham that ? I am 

 a gentleman, sir, by nature, education, fortune ; and 

 never did a human being wrong, so help me God, to 

 my knowledge, in my life. 



When you — 3,000 miles away — undertake to com- 

 mingle and involve mc in this cursed, obnoxious, Burram- 

 pooter, Brahma-pootra, Burmah-pater, Bahama-poodra, 

 sailor, Cornish, Chamberlain, Bennett, Hatch, Wright, 

 Plaisted, Knox, balderdash — I protest, . . . and 

 shall endeavour, in my own way, to answer and refute 

 your infamous and spiteful tirade against me. Before I 

 get through I have no doubt I will succeed in impress- 

 ing upon Mr. Lewis Wright, of England, if upon no 

 one else, that that gentleman had much better have 

 informed himself of the facts in this case, ere he so 

 maliciously and so stupidly ventured to assail and 

 malign the undersigned. 



I should say you penned these sentences with the 

 Fiend at your elbow. 



As Mr. Burnham had this all to himself for 

 many weeks, it is not surprising that for a short 

 space of time it produced some impression. One 

 gentleman wrote about the "little onpleasant 

 difference, which B. so far seems," he said, " to 

 have the best of" ; and another, "the personal 

 strictures in that lengthy extract upon Mr. 

 Burnham [from first edition, Illustrated Book of 

 Poultry'] I think are highly prejudiced, as well 

 as unwarranted " ; while others adopted his 

 arguments in detail, one paper openly exulting 

 over the spirited way in which the American 



• This curious produclion is in the possession of the Poultry 



was " standing up to the Britisher." It was this 

 which necessitated a more thorough dealing 

 with the matter, with the aid of much more 

 ample evidence then in our hands. This time 

 the result was final. Without of course imitating 

 the style of the above quotations, by a series of 

 contemporary extracts the whole of Burnham's 

 statements were so demolished that no one has 

 since ever attached the slightest credence to 

 them, and the result in America itself, where he 

 had been permitted his full fling of statement 

 and abuse, may be summed up in the later 

 comment of one of the same papers cited above 

 for its earlier impression, that " Burnham had 

 much better not have gone upon the war-path, 

 since the only result has been that the English- 

 man returned from it with the scalp of the 

 other hanging to his girdle." The Cornish 

 account has ever since been thoroughly accepted, 

 in America as well as in England, as the 

 true history of at least the Light Brahma. 



This being so, we need only now very briefly 

 summarise the points and the results of that 

 direct controversy between Burnham and our- 

 selves.f He began with long statements to the 

 effect that he never in those earlier days had 

 used the name of Brahmas, or ever referred to 

 them by that name at all ; and with further 

 denials that he had ever had any controversy 

 with Dr. J. C. Bennett or with Mr. Cornish, or ever 

 had any of their fowls, though he said he had 

 better ones ; the whole when put together boldly 

 asserting that he had his own distinct birds, 

 which he never put in comparison with the 

 others, and that he had let the other party go 

 on their way with theirs. This was met by 

 ample quotations from contemporary papers, 

 and letters in our possession also of that old 

 time, showing that Burnham was in hot and 

 bitter controversy with Dr. Bennett and Mr. 

 Cornish over both the name and the fowls ; that 

 he always averred their fowls were the same as 

 his own, and derived from his, and were grey 

 Shanghaes ; and that he had himself often used 

 the name of Brahmas, before we had done so at 

 all. After that had been exposed, Burnham 

 threw off any mask, and coolly stated concerning 

 Dr. Bennett and the sailor story — Dr. Bennett 

 having been many years in his grave — that 

 " Dr. John C. Bennett coined this sailor's yarn 

 originally, and the others tacitly agreed to it. 

 The fowls were from my yards or out of 

 my stock ; and Bennett never denied this in 

 America, or England, for he couldn't" {China 

 Fowl, p. 114). On a later page he reiterates 



t For fuller details, see Illustrated Book of Poultry, second 

 and subsequent editions ; and still more fully, a series of articles 

 in the Fancier's Gazette, 1874-75. 



