THE BRAHMA POOTRA FOWL. 



2-7 



THE BRAHMA POOTRA HEN. 



These fowls, as all others should, take their name from the country 

 of their nativity. Geographers differ as to the orthography of the 

 name, some spelling it Burrampooter ; others, Brahmaputra ; and others, 

 Brahma Pootra. This last is the spelling adopted by the Hon. Georg* 

 Thompson, (member of the British Parliament,) a noted traveler and 

 historian, and is the correct one as sustained by both "Webster and 

 Worcester, and the one we shall adopt. In relation to the name of 

 these fowls, Virgil Cornish, Esq., of Connecticut, in a letter to the 

 author, March 2d, 1852, observes: "No doubt you are acquainted 

 with the relative position of the State in India, called Chittagong, 

 and the river called Brahmaputra. Chittagong is a small State upon 

 the eastern borders, and bounding west upon the bay of Bengal. The 

 river Bramahputra discharges its waters into that bay, forty or fifty 

 miles from the western boundary of Chittagong. If the large, light- 

 colored fowls came from that region the Bramahputra of which I 

 think there is no doubt, for we have seen nothing which in the least 

 resembles them from any other country, still I am unable to say by 

 which name they should be called, with certainty. Chittagong, if I 

 understand it, is mountainous, little inhabited; while the country 



