88 AMERICAN POULTRY 



Of these were M- Ramsdell, Mr. Corbett, and many others. 

 The stock was widely diffused, entirely outside of the birds that 

 Mr. Upham manipulated. Spaulding never owned a real Java, 

 whatever they may have called a Java. . . ." 



This certainly vitally affects the controversy, if true, and it 

 would seem that the Rev. Mr. Bishop from his location in the 

 center of the culture of early Plymouth Rocks and by his asso- 

 ciations with so many of the early breeders, was in a position to 

 become acquainted with the facts, if a writer ever was ; further- 

 more, his experience with fowls, his writings and his former 

 position as editor of the Poultry, Pigeon and Pet Stock Bulletin, 

 all indicate that he must have possessed the attainments to 

 qualify him as an authority whose judgment can be absolutely 

 relied upon. 



Bishop goes a step further and eliminates the "Java" from 

 the Oilman and Pitman stock as well as from the Spaulding, 

 Ramsdell and Drake. 



The crucial point in the controversy is and always has been 

 whether Spaulding used a Black Cochin or a Black Java. Bishop 

 evidently bases the opinions just quoted upon the facts as he 

 records them in the following quotations from his work : 



"So far as I can determine, whatever fowls the Spauldings 

 had in their yards, or whtaever they may have called a Java, the 

 influence of that so-called or believed to be Java was purely 

 imaginary. The Java was a clean legged bird. The chicks 

 hatched from Mr. Spaulding's yard were anything but that, and 

 those feathered legs came neither from the Javas nor the Domi- 

 niques. 



"Marcus F. Town of Thompson, Connecticut, with a ten 

 years' knowledge of whatever points the so-called original Plym- 

 outh Rocks bore with them, writing in 1876, declares : The 

 chickens of my pair' (purchased of Spaulding) 'were many of 

 them heavily feathered on legs. Next year with a better mating 

 for color, there were some feather-legged.' 



"W. H. Todd of Ohio sets forth the statement in one of his 

 publications that at that time the best would throw some feather 

 legged chicks. 



"Indeed, so prevalent was this mark of an Asiatic infusion, 

 which could not have been from the Java, that we find Mr. C. C. 

 Corbett, who got out the first print of the Plymouth Rock (Fig- 

 ure 8) that was ever made, and who went all through the ques- 

 tion as to their origination, writing to the Poultry World in 

 April, 1873, to ask: 'Have you any knowledge of a stock of 



