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FANCIERS' JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 



engaged rooms for us at the Bloomer House, and entered 

 our names on the register to secure them. This fact was 

 brought up in the debate at Buffalo, and there, on the floor 

 of the house, publicly refuted by Mr. Estes. And yet, I am 

 told, the lie was still persisted in at Boston, to influence 

 those who were not present at Buffalo. 



Mr. Estes also publicly called the attention of this honor- 

 able and truthful President of " the strongest, most pros- 

 perous, and dignified body of men ever assembled together 

 for any honorable purpose," to the fact that action could 

 only be taken against the society, and not against the indi- 

 vidual ; but, no! the "boss" ruled otherwise, and his pliant 

 tools did as they were bad(e). I do not wish to be under- 

 stood as saying that all the members of the Association 

 were under the influence of the "King:" far from it. I 

 know that by far the larger portion of the members will re- 

 pudiate with indignation the actions of those who have used 

 their high positions to carry out their own petty malignant 

 schemes. I know that a number took strong ground against 

 such hasty action in the matter; but the "boss" had sent 

 forth his decree and, according to the law of the Ring, 

 which hateth him they have injured, the decree must be 

 enforced. 



I have taken legal advice upon this matter, and there is 

 not a doubt but that the President and Board of Officers have 

 laid themselves open to an action for libel. Whether I 

 shall take this course or not will depend a great deal upon 

 future events. My lawyer advises me that I am still a 

 member of the American Poultry Association ; that the res- 

 olution passed is null and void, being illegal for the reasons 

 heretofore stated. 



With this I shall drop the matter through the press, un- 

 less forced to reply to other attacks. 



A. M. Halsted. 



Eye, N. Y., April 10, 1874. 



(For Fanciers' Journal.) 



REMINISCENCES OF THE "HEN FEVER." 



BY GEO. P. BURNHAM. 



The Cochin fowl is a good domestic bird. Its true his- 

 tory, in a few sentences, may prove interesting to your 

 readers, though a vast deal has been written and said 

 hitherto for and against this stalwart representative of the 

 gallus giganteus. It occurred to me to set down among the 

 "Reminiscences" I am writing for the Fanciers' Journal 

 what I know about this variety upon seeing in your 

 columns or elsewhere recently that " the first Partridge 

 Cochins were imported into England in 1847" — a statement 

 I never before met with, and which is unquestionably an 

 error in date. 



The first Cochins (or Cochin Chinas) of which we have 

 any modern account, so far as I am informed, were sent 

 from China by the British ambassador there, to Her Majesty 

 Queen Victoria, in 1843 or 1844. The monstrous propor- 

 tions of these fowls astonished the people of England vastly, 

 and the English illustrated journals were shortly occupied 

 with pictures and accounts of these giant chickens, which 

 were a huge novelty to Messrs. John Bull. 



They were wonderful in dimensions and carriage, extra- 

 ordinary layers (Mr. Walters, the Queen's poultry-keeper, 

 verifying some one's curious statement that " the hens laid 

 two eggs in a day frequently, and sometimes three"). They 

 were hardy, flame-colored, very quiet, and altogether were 

 a most valuable acquisition to the poultry of the old coun- 



try, as everybody, on sight of them, admitted. These 

 "Cochins" were perfectly smooth-legged, and Harrison 

 Weir's pictures of them in the London Illustrated News, 

 "by royal permission," gave very accurate portraits of this 

 rare consignment, which at that time (1844) were described 

 as belonging to the family of the Otis tarda, or Great Bustard, 

 from their kindred formation and immense size. 



I read these accounts, saw the engravings in the London 

 papers, and in 1847 sent to England for half a dozen of 

 them. The Queen presented a prize pair to Lord Heyts- 

 bury, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and he sent them to 

 J. Joseph Nolan, of Bachelor's Walk, Dublin, to breed. I 

 communicated with Mr. Nolan, and finally purchased two 

 cocks and four pullets of this Queen Victoria "Cochin 

 China" stock, which were the first Cochins imported into 

 America by a citizen of the United States by at least two 

 years in point of time. I bred these smooth-legged fowls, 

 with others that I received subsequently from Canton 

 for several years, and disposed of hundreds of fine birds 

 from this stock, though I never thought them equal to the 

 Gray Shanghais (or Brahmas) by a long mark. 



These were the original " Cochins," however. They 

 were so called by the English breeders, and this name, for 

 the Queen's stock, was never changed. Why they were 

 denominated " Cochin Chinas " no one has ever yet been 

 able to determine. Certainly they never saw Cochin China, 

 and nobody in that Southern Chinese province ever saw any 

 such fowls there. Mr. Fortune, who was for a long time a 

 resident and traveler in the East, says that " whoever thus 

 named these birds has much to answer for, since denizens of 

 Cochin China say of these fowls, when subsequently seen by 

 them, that they astonished those people quite as much as 

 the sight had exercised Englishmen." Still, these were the 

 first known " Cochin Chinas," of which, as I have stated, I 

 imported the first of their progeny into Massachusetts. 



The Cochins of to-day are heavily feathered upon the 

 legs, as we all know. I received from China, fifteen or 

 twenty years ago, three or four different lots of variously 

 colored fowls, most of which were thus feathered to the 

 toes. In the case of my Cochins I called them "Royal 

 Cochin Chinas," to distinguish them from the others, which 

 I denominated White, Buff, Brown, or Gray Shanghais, be- 

 cause the latter (with the exception of one lot I imported 

 from Canton) all came direct from Shanghai. 



In course of time other parties imported fowls from Eng- 

 land or China, and the poultry societies in Great Britain 

 decided upon calling the Chinese fowls "Cochins." The 

 American -associations followed this lead ; the " standards of 

 excellence " discarded the name of Shanghais altogether 

 from their lists, and adopting Dr. Bennett's name for the 

 grays and the English style for the other colors, we now 

 have only the " Cochins " and " Brahmas" for this Chinese 

 stock, which is quite as well since everybody agrees to it. 



The original "Cochin Chinas" imported into England, 

 and first bred in this country in my yards, were quite un- 

 like the present fowls bearing this name, as I have briefly 

 stated. The modern "Cochin" is a far better bird in all 

 respects. At that early day, however (near thirty years 

 since), the first-comers were deemed very extraordinary 

 fowls, and I sent samples of these chickens all over this 

 country for years afterwards. They have quite run out 

 now. I have not seen a smooth-legged "Royal Cochin" 

 for many a day. 



As to Partridge Cochins, the first I ever met with were 



