12 



THE LEGHORNS 



Peafowls, White- Pheasants, a fowl that looked like a 

 White Leghorn, but rumpless; also a rumpless fowl with 

 Plymouth Rock plumage, and a big black rumpless cock 

 with feathered legs and a crest nearly four inches high. 

 All these were in one pen. In another pen was a bird 

 resembling a Hamburg, with rose comb, yellow hackle, 

 plumage yellowish brown, blue legs and half-white ear- 

 lobes. Then there were Japanese Bantams and a coop 

 of fowls resembling Silver Hamburgs, but about half the 

 size, the most of which had red ear-lobes, the plumage 

 being yellowish white. Then there was a pen of Sultans, 

 and poor specimens of Golden, Silver and Mottled Polish. 

 Many other varieties of birds were found here, but no 

 Leghorns, which the tourist was in quest of. 



He next went to Leghorn, a city of a hundred thou- 

 sand inhabitants, and the first place he visited was the 

 market, in search of Leghorns. There were hundreds of 

 fowls on sale. The proprietor or overseer of the market 

 explained to Mr. Ayres that he had men out with hand- 

 carts gathering up fowls in all directions, some of them 

 going as far as fifty miles for birds. Occasionally they 

 extend their trips as far as 

 the Adriatic Sea, on the op- 

 posite side of Italy, and to 

 Rome. Curiously enough, 

 the writer does not men- 

 tion the fact that he saw 

 during his trip abroad 

 either a Brown, White or 

 Pure Black Leghorn, and 

 the book winds up with the 

 writer's visit to Leghorn. 

 He does say, however, that 

 "The black fowl- is the fav- 

 orite fowl in Italy." He 

 also wrote that of the thou- 

 sands of fowl he saw out- 

 side the gates of Leghorn, 

 nine out of every ten were 

 jet black without admixture 

 of any other color, and 

 these fowls had single 

 combs, all of them. 



In this connection we 

 mention the fact that the 

 Brown Leghorn was the 

 first to appear in America as 

 a distinctive Leghorn breed. 

 Then came the Whites, and 



afterwards the Blacks. Another thing should be 

 bered; that all the Brown, White and Black Leghorns of 

 the earlier days had single combs, and that the rose combs 

 did not come until recently, especially the rose comb 

 Browns. Mr. Ayres gave Reed Watson, of East Windsor 

 Hill, Conn., credit for introducing the first Black Leg- 

 horns in this country from abroad, though he admits that 

 many Black Leghorns had been made in this country be- 

 fore Mr. Watson's importation, from sports of Dominique 

 Leghorns, and that these black sports bred together pro- 

 duced true Black Leghorns in every particular. 



Mr. Ayres brought no Leghorns home from Italy 

 with him. If he did, he does not mention it. Perhaps he 

 was grievously disappointed in not finding what he was 

 in search of. He says, in conclusion, that in all his 

 travels in Italy he did not see a rose comb fowl, and gives 

 it as his opinion that all rose combs were made in 

 America. He further stated that most of the fowls he 

 saw there were good Leghorn shape, but he saw no pure 

 breeds, unless it was the Blacks. 



Now I want to ask: Where the Brown and White 

 Leghorns came from? Surely not from Italy. There is 

 no record anywhere, and I have searched faithfully for it, 

 to show that a Brown or White Leghorn was ever im- 

 ported from Italy in the early days. No tourist ever saw 

 one there, and they were never there, unless imported 

 from this country in later years. The conclusion, then, is 

 that the Brown and White Leghorns are purely American 

 breeds, which I have long maintained and must adhere 

 to. The principal factor in making the Brown Leghorn 

 was the Black Breasted Red Game. What other cross 

 was used I am at a loss to determine. The male Brown 



4. BLACK LEGHORNS IN 1875. 

 This old print appeared in the December Poultry World. 1875. 

 The cut was engraved by Mr. Porter, then considered the best 

 delineator of fowl, the subject being a pair of Blacli Leghorns 

 owned by C. E. L. Hayward, New Hampshire, one of V 



Df thii 



Leghorns of earlier days were much like the Black Reds; 

 so much so as to be often mistaken for them, and they 

 possessed all the pugnacity of the Games. The Brown 

 Red Games were also introduced in the cross. 



To sum up, then, from all the data at hand, and after 

 the most critical search for facts concerning the Leghorns, 

 the only conclusion that can be leached is that we are np.t 

 indebted to Italy for the Leghorns; that they did not 

 originate there, and that they are purely an American 

 breed, just as much as the Wyandottes or Plymouth 

 Rocks are American breeds. Then let us speak of this 

 favorite breed of fowls not as from Italy, or in the Med- 

 iterranean class, but as American fowls, in the American 

 class. 



None will dispute Mr. Davis' patriotic sentiments, 

 even if his claims, especially as to the origin of White and 

 Black Leghorns, are not well supported by authentic data. 

 H. H. Stoddard, in his "New Book on the Brown Leg- 

 horn," sums up the history of the origin of the color and 

 form of Brown Leghorns 

 in the following intelligent 

 and impartial language: 



To us the origin of the 

 name of the Leghorn fowl 

 is not as interesting as the 

 origin of those peculiarities 

 which distinguish the breed. 

 Color of plumage may be 

 nothing remarkable. We 

 have the White, Black and 

 Brown and Dominique. 

 These colors, on domesti- 

 cated fowls, without care, 

 would be mixed in many 

 specimens, and the Leg- 

 horn would really be a 

 speckled fowl. But who has 

 not observed, in flocks of 

 native fowls that have been 

 bred without any choice of 

 color, how in a few years, 

 the red-hackled cock ap- 

 pears, with the black breast, 

 and the "brown hen?" This 

 seems to be a natural ar- 

 rangement of color when 

 breeding for color is not an object of attention. Hence it 

 is reasonable to suppose that the Brown Leghorn, in its 

 native clime, may have the most natural color among the 

 black, white and mixed. 



The doctrine recently advanced by an eminent writer 

 on poultry that all breeds of fowls tend to grow lighter 

 in color, may be pronounced decidedly erroneous. If this 

 were the case, then on farms the flocks bred hap-hazard 

 style would all have become snow-white long ago. The 

 truth is, domestication causes the color of pigeons and 

 poultry of all kinds, in common with horses, dogs, sheep, 

 cattle and all other domestic animals, to scatter in all 

 directions. There is a constant tendency toward white, 

 black, brown, yellow, mottled, pied, brindled, spotted, 

 "ring-streaked, speckled and grizzled." But there is no 

 more gravitation toward light colors than toward dark 

 ones. Black sheep appear persistently, in spite of con- 

 tinued weeding. White and black horses start up in a 

 strain of bays. No matter what the uniform color of a 

 race of birds or quadrupeds is in a state of nature, do- 

 mesticate it, and owing to a change of food, or to some 

 unknown cause or combination of artificial influences, the 

 stock branches out in a few generations, to a great di- 

 versity of colors. Now, with fowls there is not only a 

 constant tendency to this scattering of color, but also a 

 conflicting tendency to the reversion to the primitive type 

 of the Gallus Bankiva, the parent wild stock, which is 

 colored very much like our Standard Brown Leghorns of 

 today. Therefore the persistent appearance in the barn- 

 yard fowls of Italy of the Brown variety of Leghorns 

 among black, white and speckled specimens, is but the 

 assertion of the original tendency of the race, and the 



its admission to the 



