244 The Illustrated Book ol Poultry. 



Wliethcr the latter may have bred, amongst others, very tolerable imitations of Brahmas, is, 

 as we before observed, not the question. We have seen that there were two qualities of birds 

 known in the early da>-s — one a spurious, which bred mongrel progeny, and could be traced to 

 Burnham ; the other pure, which was always traced to Connecticut, or a little later to Dr. Bennett, 

 who procured his from that State. But such, and accounts of such published after the pure 

 Brahmas were even publicly shown, cannot invalidate a consistent and credible account given from 

 the very first of the genuine strain ; and, as Mr. Cornish justly argues, confirmed and inquired into 

 at the time and on the spot, while all the witnesses were alive and available for examination. 

 Burnham himself states in his last work that he was a member of that very coniinittee, at Boston, 

 which was appointed in 1850 to settle the name, as mentioned in Mr. Cornish's letter to Colonel 

 Weld. He says that the name was thus given by them " against his protest ;" and the unavoidable 

 conclusion from that simple fact alone must be, that parties who knew both considered Mr. Cornish 

 the most reliable witness of the two. 



The objections urged by Mr. Tegetmeier to the accepted view are certainly of greater weight 

 than Burnham's " Narrative," but are still ludicrously insufficient to overthrow it ; they remain 

 objections, and no more, while most of them admit of complete answers. Thus, when that 

 gentleman, in the face of the preceding statements and facts, most of which were accessible to 

 him, affirms that "there is )iot a particle of evidence to show that they came from India," it is 

 impossible to deal with such an assertion in any serious manner. When he further alleges 

 that "the banks of the Brahma-Pootra have long been in the possession of the British, 

 and no such fowls were ever seen in that locality," this, too, is both totally irrelevant and 

 altogether contrary to well-established facts, considering, on the one hand, the many years during 

 which the Chinese ports had been open to "the British," while it was only in 1847 (the very 

 same year Mr. Chamberlain's first Brahma chicks were hatched) that the first strains of real 

 Cochins were imported ; and, on the other, the many published statements (also accessible to 

 Mr. Tegetmeier) that "such" fowls had been seen in India. Thus, a clergyman, in ]\Iay, 1S56' 

 published a letter in the recognised poultry organ, stating, " A relation of mine was looking at my 

 fowls last summer, and on my telling him that Brahmas were considered by many only a variety 

 of Cochins, he remarked, ' I remember them when I first went to India, more than forty years 

 since, long before Cochins were heard of here ; but they were considered a great rarity.'" There 

 are other published letters to a similar effect, and one stating that they had been seen in Ceylon. 

 Still further, when the same writer quotes Mr. Cornish's letter already given (though without the 

 usual courtesy of acknowledging the source whence he obtained it) as "acknowledging" that 

 Brahmas "were first exhibited in Boston under the name of Grey Chittagongs, in 1850," it is 

 scarcely needful to remark that the matter in dispute is not a question of name. When Burnham 

 said that the Dark Brahmas were formed by a cross between Grey Chittagongs and Cochins, he 

 meant by Chittagong the large, ugly, grey fowl then passing by that title in America, and which 

 at that date was a coarse variety of Malay crossed with Dorking, and not, except in size and 

 general tint, like a lirahma. The simple question is, whether there is, or was, any fmre breed in 

 India of the Brahma type ; and we had a curious instance quite lately of this singular misappre- 

 hension of the point, which may serve also as additional proof that there are some " particles of 

 evidence" of the fowls coming from India. It reached us in the shape of a letter from an aged 

 Indian officer, who had read our monograph on this breed with interest, and who wrote to us to say 

 that we were mistaken in our view ; that the fowl "was the Chittagong breed, of which he had seen 

 hundreds in India, only not so truly bred as these new-fangled specimens." The writer of this 

 evidently thought he had overturned Mr. Cornish's account, and his literal accuracy could not be 



