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article will be appreciated thoroughly by all students of Plym- 

 outh Rock history. 



"The variety now known by this name has never been cor- 

 rectly described in any work on poultry ; all hitherto published, 

 both in England and America, confounding it with a creation of 

 Dr. Bennett's some twenty years ago, and described by him in 

 his well known American work on fowls. This description is 

 highly curious and well illustrates our opening remarks on some 

 American so-called 'breeds: T have given this name,' he says, 

 'to a very extra breed of fowls, which I produced by crossing a 

 Cochin China cockerel with a hen that was herself a cross be- 

 tween the Fawn-colored Dorking, the Great Malay and the Wild 

 Indian. Her weight is six pounds seven ounces. The Plymouth 

 Rock fowl, then, is really one-half Cochin, one-fourth Fawn- 

 colored Dorking, one-eighth Great Malay and one-eighth Indian. 

 Their plumage is rich and variegated, the cocks usually red and 

 speckled, and the pullets darkish brown. They are very fine 

 fleshed and early fit for the table. Their legs are large and 

 usually blue or green, but occasionally yellow or white, generally 

 having five toes upon each foot ; seme have the legs feathered, 

 but this is not usual.' 



"It is only necessary to read the above description to sec 

 that this extra breed of fowls, which bred legs yellow, white, 

 blue-green, feathered or clean, five-toed or four-toed, could not 

 possibly last long. It was too 'extra' for this world and even 

 the inventor could not 'run the machine' long, so complicated 

 was it in its various parts. This Plymouth Rock, then, naturally 

 and inevitably disappeared from simple disintegration of its 

 heterogeneous materials, and though Dr. Bennett's old descrip- 

 tion has been copied by all poultry authors who have noticed 

 the fowl up to the present date, this has arisen from igno- 

 rance, first of the fowl itself and, secondly, of the accounts given 

 by its breeders and producers. So completely had the old Plym- 

 outh Rock disappeared, that in the first poultry journal e' r er 

 published in America, the New York Poultry Bulletin, no notice 

 whatever is taken of any fowl under that name during the first 

 two years of its issue. The description in the American 'Stand- 

 ard of Excellence,' published in 1871, states the colcr as dark or 

 li^ht steel-grey for cocks, and dark steel-mottled black and white, 

 black and white bars well defined across each feather, frr the 

 hens. This is evidently intended to describe Dominique mark- 

 ing, and indeed the editor adds a remark in brackets that he con- 



