TRIMMING IN HAMBURGHS. 



447 



bring out his old birds in better condition than 

 most of his competitors, and this was greatly 

 due to his system of keeping them under cover. 

 He had an old disused cotton-mill at his com- 

 mand, the spacious floors of which were parti- 

 tioned off into pens from 6 feet to lo feet 

 square, littered with gravel and straw, and well 

 lighted by windows. Here the birds could be 

 kept quite out of wind and sun, yet with plenty 

 of' light, and were in perfect health under the 

 sedulous care of the late Mr. Job Rawnsley. 

 Not many can have the advantage of such space 

 for penning ; but the lively disposition of Ham- 

 burghs makes it very advisable that any necessary 

 confinement for reasons of lobe and colour should 

 be in as large pens as possible. They need, of 

 course, a little training in exhibition pens as 

 well, and cocks will stand a week or two of this ; 

 but Hamburgh hens and pullets often go back 

 in condition if kept any length of time in small 

 pens, and are better only thus treated at short 

 intervals, with more liberty in between. Even 

 thus the pens should be larger than usual, say 

 about 3 feet square. 



But the real difficulties of exhibiting 

 Hamburghs have been more serious than these. 

 They consisted, first of all, in that complicated 

 system of double-breeding — for it was more 

 really that, than what is expressed merely by 

 double-mating, as now ordinarily understood — 

 already described. Such a system necessarily 

 kept the breeds to which it was applied in the 

 hands of a select circle who understood it ; 

 nearly all new-comers who were attracted by the 

 beauty of the fowls and their wonderful laying, 

 being one after the other disheartened by their 

 inability to produce progeny like those which 

 they so admired. But worse followed. The 

 ideals pursued, and the smallness and wonderful 

 skill of the coterie which pursued them, have led 

 to an amount of trimming in Hamburghs as yet 

 unknown in any other breed. Such combs as 

 are now required camiot be shown honestly save 

 in some rare case out of scores, and the vast 

 majority are cut and carved into shape, as any- 

 one can see from the glossy scars ; while again 

 and again needles and pins and wires and 

 threads have been extracted from them, having 

 been used to get or to keep them in shape. 

 A certain number may be bred in the first place ; 

 but the long spike now demanded soon begins 

 to drag down by its own weight ; or if not, the 

 heat of a show soon causes it to droop, and then 

 it has to be " set up," which in any way is a 

 most cruel operation. False sickles have re- 

 peatedly been found fastened in, in such an 

 ingenious way that even opponents who have 

 " bowled them out " have expressed their free 



and ungrudging admiration, and with entire 

 good feeling — ^we speak of what we have heard 

 and seen. As to "thinning out" spangles, we 

 have already shown that this must be done if 

 the large spots now bred are to be seen. The 

 broad practical result has been to make of 

 Hamburgh-breeding for exhibition a somewhat 

 peculiar cult, whose followers form almost a 

 circle of themselves, with their own accepted 

 methods and ideas of what is fitting. On the 

 other hand, we have heard it said again and 

 again by outsiders who have tried it and given 

 it up again, after finding out what had to be 

 done, that " no gentleman could show Ham- 

 burghs," and we know such an impression to be 

 very widespread indeed. That is exaggeration, 

 perhaps, though we do think that (with the 

 exception perhaps of the Pencilled varieties) no 

 lady could do so without aid from her " man " 

 of which she was happily ignorant, and that few 

 gentlemen would wish to, while the present 

 system is connived at and encouraged by the 

 judges. And there are certainly some signs of 

 matters mending. We have gladly chronicled 

 already some reaction against excessive size of 

 spangling, which may possibly go further ; 

 indeed, will have to go further if " thinning " is 

 to be avoided, and could certainly go further, 

 with the result of still further increasing the 

 beauty of the fowl to ordinary eyes.* Comb- 

 trimming also is beginning to receive more 

 steady protest than formerly. But there has 

 been too much ground for the feeling ; and any 

 such impression on the one hand, combined with 

 practical restriction to a small circle on the 

 other, while it produces specimens almost match- 

 less from a certain point of view, and may even 

 increase the price of a few such specimens in 

 their own peculiar market, is ruinous to a 

 breed as regards general classes, or any wide 

 popularity or usefulness. 



Judging Hamburghs very largely resolves 

 itself into vigilance in regard to the matters just 

 referred to, or at least should do so ; the main 

 " points " being well understood, and seldom in 

 much doubt. Up to the present we have never 

 heard of any judge penalising "thinning" — in 

 other words, wholesale plucking of spangled 

 feathers — since the days of the late Mr. Teebay, 

 who did " pass " a few cases for reasons which 

 he showed us ; nor does such penalty appear 

 expected or demanded in Hamburgh circles. 



* As a proof, see the drawings of Spangled Hamburghs, by 

 all artists without exception. All birds thus represented show 

 the "spotting " all over, and are much smaller in spangles than 

 Mooneys as bred even in 1900. This is perhaps the only case 

 in which the " ideal " of all artists has rebelled, from sheer 

 necessity, against the ideal in one point (size of spangle) of the 

 fancier. 



