208 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



COCHINS. 



Ir is often stated tliat the origin of tliis breed, and its first appearance in England, are alike to be 

 traced to some fowls imported in i S43, and which subsequently passed into the possession of Her 

 Majesty, under the name of Cochin China fowls ; but from a drawing of these very birds which 

 appeared in the Illustrated London Nnvs of that date, it is easy to see that they possessed no 

 characters whatever which distinguish Cochins as we now know them, except the yellow legs arvd 

 the large size. They were voy long and bare on the leg ; the carriage of the head was backward 

 instead of forward ; the tails were tolerably abundant (much more so than even the modern 

 Brahma) and carried high ; and the back sloped down to the tail instead of rising to it. Add to 

 this that the birds were both narrow and entirely destitute of fluff, and the plumage close and hard 

 instead of soft and downy ; and it will be rather hard to conceive the grounds of such an amazing 

 assertion as that 1843 "may be stated as being the period of the first introduction of these 

 remarkable fowls into this country." These early birds, in fact, while combining some of the blood 

 of both, were evidently far more Malay than Cochin in their type, and probably came in reality 

 from the region whose name they bore. They always retained the bare leg, and with hardly an 

 exception had black, or nearly black, eyes. 



Later on Her Majesty possessed better specimens, and in 1S46 exhibited at the Dublin Cattle 

 Show some fowls which attracted great attention, but were still nearly as far from the true type. It 

 was, in fact, not until 1847 that two English breeders introduced birds which exhibited at least the 

 essentials of the Cochin variety as we now have it. All these birds came from China, and almost 

 exclusively from the port of Shanghae ; and hence for some time a fruitless controversy was raised 

 as to the proper name, and fruitless attempts made to change their popular designation for the 

 undoubtedly more accurate one of Shanghaes. These attempts were continued later in America 

 than in England ; and till a few years ago many United States fanciers were in the habit of 

 calling all feather-legged Cochins by the name of Shanghaes ; but even there the attempt has 

 failed, and the recent increased intercourse between the fanciers of the two nations has finally 

 produced uniformity of nomenclature at the expense of accuracy. We not only need the space, 

 but we have not the inclination to go at length, as some have done, into this now useless 

 controversy ; the more especially as we have often remarked the curious uniformity with which, in 

 any struggle of facts against a popular name, the name is sure to win. It is sufficient to observe 

 that so it was in the case of these birds. Cochins they certainly were not ; but Cochins people 

 zvould have them to be, Cochins they became, and Cochins they remain. 



The introduction of these fowls, as we have already hinted, was a memorable event in the 

 history of poultry ; since they undoubtedly awakened that startling " mania " which was, calmly 

 considered, cne of the most curious phenomena ol the nineteenth century, and which, after it died 

 away, left behind it an enduring interest in poultry generally, which nothing has since been able to 

 destroy. Scarcely any people at that time kept fowls ; and as for the few poultry-shows which 



