360 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



HAMBURGHS. 



The fowls known at the present day under the general name of Hamburghs, and which present 

 the common characteristics of rather small size, slender clean legs, neat rose combs, moderate-sized 

 white ear-lobes, light but sweeping and graceful outlines, and the absence of the incubating instinct, 

 had certainly two distinct origins. There is very little doubt that the two varieties known as 

 Pencilled Hamburghs were really imported from Holland, having been, for years previously to 

 the present name, well known under the title of Dutch Everyday Layers or Everlasting Layers, 

 and having been largely imported both at a comparatively recent date, and on many former 

 occasions of which there is historical evidence. The Spangled and Black varieties, on the contrary, 

 are as evidently a native English breed of considerable antiquity, having been kept and shown at 

 village exhibitions beyond the memory of man ; and the Spangled breeds, besides the difference 

 in marking, presenting differences of shape, being larger, plumper, and somewhat coarser in make, 

 besides a greater width across the skull. These latter varieties were always known under the 

 name of the Lancashire Mooneys and Yorkshire Pheasant fowls, while the Blacks were called 

 Black Pheasant fowls ; until almost immediately after the establishment of the Great Birmingham 

 Show the authorities there — chiefly, we believe, owing to the influence of the Rev. E. S. Dixon — 

 grouped all under the general name of Hamburghs, and the paramount authority of that great 

 gathering was sufficient to make the new nomenclature general. We confess we cannot see the 

 evils some have pedantically professed to find in this ; the new name is not, so far as we have 

 found, at all misunderstood in a geographical sense, and it answers at least the useful purpose of 

 forming into one compact group fowls which in their main characteristics are very similar. 



We are not sure but that the argument may be carried further, and that the old Birmingham 

 authorities whose work has been so much villificd in some quarters may not have been guided by 

 a sounder instinct than at first sight appears. Fully admitting that for a long period the Spangled 

 and Pencilled races have been thoroughly distinct, and can be traced back only to distinct origins, 

 it is still impossible to stand before the pens at a good show and compare the Gold-pencilled with 

 the Gold-spangled, and similarly the two Silver classes, noting thus practically the striking analogy 

 not only in heads, deaf-ears, size, and shape, but in the common property of a distinct lustrous 

 black marking on one or the other ground-colour, and remembering also the equal similarity as 

 regards absence of any incubating instinct, without the question almost irresistibly arising of 

 whether there was not some still more ancient common progenitor of both ; and this question is by 

 no means dismissed by the difference in the shape and character of the present markings. Once 

 started, the arguments in favour of sucli a hypothesis will be found very strong indeed ; for not 

 only, as we shall see further on, are Spangled chickens frequently /^««7/^^ in their first feathers, but 

 later in life the black spangles or moons are frequently surmounted by a light tip beyond them, 

 thus again approaching to the pencilled character ; while conversely it will be seen that if Pencilled 

 birds be bred too dark, the last bar has a strong tendency to become much too wide, thus 



