42 8HANGHAE FOWLS. 



eggs than any other breed. The chief obstacle in the -way of their 

 fertility, is their proneness to incubate. By care, however, this can 

 be prevented, and if so, a Shanghae hen will scarcely ever miss a day 

 without producing an egg." 



The letter, from which the above brief extract was taken for 

 publication in the Northern Farmer, contained much more mat- 

 ter of interest, but having been mislaid, I am compelled to 

 forego its publication here. The following very interesting 

 communication, of a subsequent date, will, however, partially 

 atone for the loss of the original one. 



NORTHUMBERLAND, Pa., Nov. 21, 1851. 



My Dear Sir, Since writing you before, I have attended the State 

 Fairs at Rochester and Harrisburg, and have returned home with my 

 former notions of the varieties of the gallus giganteus very consid- 

 erably confused. I have seen almost as many different sorts of Shang- 

 haes as can be found among the common dunghill fowls yellow, red, 

 dominique, speckled, white and black ; legs of every color feathered 

 and featherless ranging through all sizes, from ordinary to gigantic. 

 And this of a breed, which my previous limited researches had taught 

 me, was primitive, distinct and uniform. 



At Harrisburg, I exhibited, among other large fowls, a pair of 

 beautiful Shanghaes, five and a half months old, of unexceptionable 

 pedigree, descended from stock I purchased last year of Dr. Kerr. 

 Their grand-parents had pecked scraps of dog-pie from a Chinese 

 platter, and waked the tea-pickers by the banks of the Yang-Tse-Ki- 

 ang, to their morning toil. The stag, the handsomest color imaginable 

 fine, brilliant yellow dominique ; the pullet, glossy^, light yellow 

 both heavily feathered upon the legs, and very downy in plumage, and 

 according to the books, filling every requisite of pure, thorough-bred 

 Shanghaes, for which they were purchased. Nevertheless, Mr. New- 

 bold, of Philadelphia, himself an importer of fowls from Asia, and 

 who deservedly stands high as a naturalist in this peculiar branch, 

 pronounced them Cochin Chinas. As the committee, of which Mr. N. 

 was chairman, awarded them a very flattering premium, I was not 

 disposed to quarrel with the name, but like Galileo on an equally im- 

 portant occasion, I persisted in my old belief. 



A cock, about as heavy as an ordinary game fowl, with short, clean 

 legs, by the way, a very handsome bird, was adjudged the Shanghaest 

 chicken on the ground. He looked some like a cross between the 

 Game and some undersized Cochin China. Thus doctors differ. I 

 apprehend the science of chickens, when it comes to minute classifi- 

 cation, will prove almost as troublesome as entomology. 



A number of gentlemen import large fowls from China one 

 importation differing from another. Each gentleman considers his 

 own the only pure Shanghaes, and the others, of course, mere adul- 

 terations. The truth is, I doubt not, in that original home of cocks 

 and hens, they have, as elsewhere, in the course of ages, obtained an 

 almost endless variety some differing little, derived from a common 



