A^A The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 



on it. But it has throughout been my ill-fortune, out of many imported pens of a cock and two 

 hens each, to lose one, generally a hen, within a week or two of their arrival, and the others have 

 had a severe illness from the same sickness, apparently severe cold and roup. Once over this 

 attack, imported birds have proved perfectly hardy in every way. I have generally found them to 

 be larger-framed birds than I could produce here, but not showing nearly so much breeding in 

 form, feather, crest, or comb as the birds produced from my original stock that had been carefully 

 matched for years, with an occasional admixture of imported stock. I found, too, that imported 

 birds were very much more liable to variegation of white and golden feathers than English-bred 

 birds, and, as a rule, after their second season they were useless for exhibition purposes. 



" The chickens reared here I have never found so precocious as has been stated. In this 



Fig. 91. — Head of Crevecceur Cock. 



district they are especially difficult to rear, and suffer to an unusual extent from cold and roup, to 

 which they fall easy victims. As compared with any of the hardy breeds, say Brahmas or Cochins, 

 I should not expect to rear one Crevecceur for three of the others. In all varieties of fowls a really 

 fine specimen is a rarity, but a fairly good average quality is generally attainable ; but in Creve- 

 coeurs, from the most carefully selected parents, I have found a very large proportion of most 

 inferior birds, bad in feather, form, crest, or comb, and that birds at all approaching a quality fit 

 for exhibition have been especially difficult to obtain." 



These notes were written in 1871, and at that period all the accounts we were able t^ obtain 

 from other breeders were pretty much to the same effect. But we were much interested to observe 

 even then that there were evident signs of " better days " to come for the poor Creves, and that, 

 although known and bred for many years without apparent improvement in constitution, there 

 appeared some probability of their becoming, to a fair extent, "acclimatised" after all. We 

 ventured to express a belief to this effect on various occasions, and were the more confirmed in it 

 by hearing, on unimpeachable authority, that certain strains imported into the United States from 

 France were found very fairly hardy, which would go far to prove that much depended on the 



