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FANCIERS' JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 



Dr. Bennett, Mr. Cornish, or Mr. Anybody to thus mis- 

 name my fowls. Everybody in England and America 

 knew this; though my name was, by others, sometimes men- 

 tioned in this connection ; but, if Mr. Cornish, Dr. Bennett, 

 or Mr. Wright; Dr. Gwynne, or Mr. Bailey; Mr. Teget- 

 meier, or his Eoyal Highness Prince Albert, chose (as some 

 did, I believe, after a while) to call my Gray Shanghais 

 "Brahmas," could I help it? I never called any of their 

 fowls "Gray Shanghais," surely. I| am not charged with 

 this mistake at any rate, for Mr. "Wright himself says (in 

 "P. E. W.'s" quotation from him) that " Burnham could 

 not get that stock." 



How a sensible man who writes so cleverly as Wright 

 does, usually, could have wrought himself up to penning 

 such a tirade as he has, first and last against me on this 

 always-hated "Brahma" question, is more than I can 

 comprehend — since it is notorious that I never had anything 

 whatever to do with favoring it. I had then strenuously 

 opposed it in committees; in my writings; in conventions; 

 in public and private; first, last, and always; upon the 

 ever-constant principle that my fowls were " Gray Shang- 

 hais " from the start, and not " Brahma-Pootras." 



I have often smiled at this talk and zeal on Mr. Wright's 

 part to cry me and my fowls down, and frequently I have 

 been urged to reply to him. I invariably used to do so, and 

 have said a hundred times to friends : " Why, bless you, Mr. 

 Wright is all at sea in this matter ! He is talking and writing 

 about what does not concern me at all. He writes about the 

 ' Brahma fowl,' and of ' Brahma-Pootras.' What have I 

 to do with ' Brahma-Pootraism ?' I have no 'Brahma- 

 Pootras;' I never had ; I never claimed to have had. My 

 fowls are the 'Gray Shanghais ' — light and dark, my dear sir. " 



"True, But why dont you call your fowls 'Brahmas,' 

 as others do, Mr. Burnham ?" " Because I don't choose 

 to — I never did, and I'm too old to go back on myself. 

 They are not Brahmas — that is, I mean my stock. I never 

 said it was, and I never will." 



These had steadily been my assertions ; still, Mr. Wright 

 keeps calling me hard names, declaring that I " never had 

 any genuine Brahmas " (who siys I did ?), and that " Burn- 

 ham might have bred some tolerable imitation Brahmas" 

 (which I did not). I had never even said I had any 

 "Brahmas" whatever, genuine or imitation; that I ever 

 tried to breed " Brahmas," or pretended I did. I had 

 never even called my fowls " Brahmas," and never would ; 

 and I surely made no statement, oral or written, in which 

 Mr. Cornish's fowls were involved, where I was a witness 

 "more" or "less reliable," as Mr. Wright states, because 

 his " Chittagongs " or "Brahma-Pootras," or whatever he 

 named them, never interfered with my " Gray Shanghaes" 

 any more than did Dr. Bennett's " Wild East India Pawn- 

 colored Dorkings," at this same period notable. 



Mr. Wright adds that Burnham failed to purchase this 

 Cornish stock, because he could not get it. Why not? I 

 never tried to buy it. What did I want of it ? I had the 

 older stock, which I always deemed the best, to wit: the 

 Gray Shanghais. Mr. Wright lays great stress on the fact 

 that " Burnham vainly tried to purchase this stock, but did 

 not succeed." Admitted, again, that I did not. Thus, of 

 course, Mr. Wright is a good witness that the fowls I had 

 (presupposing that I ever had any) were not of this Cornish- 

 Chamberlin, "Chittagong" or " Brahma- Pootra" strain. 

 This settles one point clearly. 



But, I had better ones, and this it was that bothered my 



competitors, as thousands testified in favor of my birds, all 

 over the world, in those years. I raised over 1600 of the 

 " Gray Shanghais " in one year (1852 to 1853) in Melrose, 

 and sent them all over Great Britain and the United 

 States, to'my generous patrons entire satisfaction, but 

 never once calling them by the detested name of Brahma- 

 Pootras, about which Mr. Wright has so unkindly (toward 

 me) raised such a silly fuss. 



All this, be it remembered, I now state as applying in point 

 of time to the period when Mr. Wright got out his books. 

 Of course, in the Inst few years (since this " Brahma " name 

 has been so universally in use), I have as often spoken of 

 them as of my Gray Shanghais, because everybody latterly 

 thus designates this kind of poultry, for convenience. And 

 in my " New Poultry Book," issued in 1871, I advertised 

 and wrote about them as " Brahmas," because we had all 

 accepted this latest popularly established name — both in 

 England and America — but not previously, when Wright 

 published his works. 



I am now sixty years of age. I solemnly declare that I 

 never was concerned in making or in sustaining this name 

 of " Brahma" for fowls. I never claimed it for my stock; 

 I had no occasion to do so. I never (in those years) sold 

 any fowls thus, for I knew when and where this name was 

 made — by another party, for his own purposes — and I knew 

 that my stock were not " Brahmas," but true " Gray Shang- 

 hais." Under this latter name, only, I always sent them 

 to England. If other people choose to call them " Black 

 Spanish," I could not and cannot help it. 



And to sum up, briefly, I will now say to Mr. Wright, 

 you have entirely misapprehended this whole "Brahma" 

 origin matter, so far as /am concerned. You have assailed 

 me and my fowls for no good reason under God's heavens. 

 I never had anything whatever to do with your " Brahma " 

 fowls, about which you make such an ado! I never wished 

 to; I never bred, bought, borrowed, kept, or had any 

 " Brahmas," during the first twenty years of the poultry 

 mania, from 1848, forward. Mr. Cornish does not say a 

 word about me; and that gentleman and myself have never 

 had any variance whatever, either written or verbal. In 

 his letter he does not talk of Mr. Burnham, or about " Brah- 

 mas." He calls his fowls " Chittagongs," then as Dr. Kerr 

 and Mr. Chamberlin did. Afterwards, they called them 

 " Brahma-Pootras," I believe, as they had the right to do, 

 just as I had ahoays called mine " Gray Shanghais," by the 

 same right ; as they (and Mr. Wright ought to) very well 

 know. 



Dr. Bennett created this name of "Brahma." Surely, 

 Mr. Lewis Wright, "thou can'st not say I did it," and 

 speak the truth ! And, once for all, I now inform you that 

 I had no share in this " Brahma-Pootra" or "Brahma" 

 bubble, either as to fowls or by this name (except justly to 

 ridicule it), from the beginning to the end; but constantly 

 and always fought it " tooth and nail," as Cornish, Bennett, 

 and everybody else knows; and simply claimed that I had 

 and (bred, kept, and sold) presented to the Queen, and ex- 

 hibited, only my choice " Gray Shanghais," the finest fowls 

 in the world, which I imported from Shanghai, through 

 Philadelphia (Dr. Kerr) and New York (W. T. Porter), in 

 1849 and 1850. Will you correct these errors of yours, by 

 publishing this article in your new London Fanciers' Gazette? 

 I ask this at your hands as my just, legal, and moral right. 

 You have the facts before you. Will you, Mr. Lewis 

 Wright, now accord me this simple justice? 



