293 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



ORPINGTONS. 



WITH the fowls known by this name we 

 enter upon a large class of modern 

 breeds, produced by crossing from 

 one or more of the original Asiatic races, in- 

 cluding in every case some proportion of the 

 Shanghae element. Most of them originated 

 in America ; but all those treated of in this 

 chapter were produced in England, and some 

 had quite different origins. 



Writing in 191 1, Mr. W. Richardson, of 

 Horsham, Sussex, founder of the Buff Orping- 

 ton Club, and President of both the Black and 

 the White Orpington Clubs, to whom we are 

 indebted for notes on the Black, Buff and 

 White varieties, says : — 



" There is no breed of modern production 

 in which so much interest is taken or over which 

 there has been so much controversy as the Or- 

 pington. A good many fanciers of the older 

 breeds raised at first all sorts of objections 

 to them, but the opposition to their introduc- 

 tion only seemed to make their admirers more 

 keen to develop the breed, with the result that 

 there are now probably more fanciers and 

 breeders of Orpington fowls than of any other 

 breed of poultry. 



"There are seven varieties of Orpingtons, 

 and I will name them in their order of intro- 

 duction to the public: Black, Buff, White, 

 Jubilee, Spangled, Cuckoo and Blue. There 

 are also rose-comb specimens of the Black, Buff 

 and White varieties. The first two are hardly 

 ever seen now, but there are a few fanciers who 

 breed the rose-comb White Orpington, which 

 seems to be largely developed from the White 

 Wyandotte, as the original single comb White 

 Orpingtons never produced any rose-comb 

 specimens." 



The one to be first described, and the 

 original Orpington, is so largely a Langshan 

 that we should have included it in the previous 

 chapter if it had stood alone. It 

 Black was originated and pushed by the 



Orpingtons, late Mr. W. Cook, then living at 

 Orpington, in Kent, from which 

 Kentish town he took the name. He stated 

 that the method of production employed in re- 



gard to the single-combed Orpington was to 

 cross a large Minorca cock with black sports 

 from Plymouth Rocks ; pullets of this cross 

 being then mated with clean-legged Langshan 

 cockerels, and the produce carefully bred to a 

 deep-bodied and short-legged type. The re- 

 sult was a black fowl with the green gloss of 

 the Langshan, but with clean legs, of the 

 plumper make of the illustration on p. 280, 

 with white skin and meat and a well-shaped 

 carcass, and which is an excellent winter layer 

 of brown eggs. The weakest point of the Orp- 

 ington is that the eggs are not so large as might 

 be expected from the size of the fowl ; still they 

 are, in single-combed strains, of a fair average 

 size. Mr. Cook also produced a rose-combed 

 Orpington from the rose-combed Langshans 

 mentioned in the preceding chapter, which had 

 the same general qualities, but with the curious 

 difference, which we are unable to explain un- 

 less from some individuality of the rose- 

 combed Langshans employed, that the eggs 

 are smaller than from the single-combed. 

 Owing probably to this difference, the rose- 

 combed Black Orpington has never become 

 generally popular. 



There is no doubt that some original Black 

 Orpingtons were produced as stated ; but there 

 is as little doubt that the breed has since con- 

 siderably changed in two distinct directions. 

 As stated in cur next chapter, there is little 

 question that one of the components of the 

 Plymouth Rock was the Black Java fowl ; and, 

 as stated in the preceding, it is equally obvious 

 that this Black Java has much in common with 

 the Langshan, however that fact be interpreted. 

 This darker and more typical component in 

 the Asiatic blood had thus a double pre- 

 potency, and its predominance over the more 

 Shanghae components would be intensified by 

 breeding for clean instead of feathered shanks. 

 This doubly strong element therefore rapidly 

 overpowered the Minorca element, and the Or- 

 pingtons quickly became to all intents and 

 purposes clean-legged Langshans, taking the 

 place of that shorter-legged, symmetrical type 

 once popular, but subsequently discarded by 



