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FANCIER S’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
hai, Chittagong, or Brahma-Pootra, as different breeders 
may select, for the present, admitting that they are really a 
very superior bird, and will he found decidedly the most 
valuable among all the large Chinese fowls, of which they 
are clearly a very good variety.” 
This, mark you, in the spring and fall of 1852, at the Boston 
Fowl Shows, where I did not enter the first fowl, for com- 
petition. And farther on, in this Committee of Judges’ 
Report (above quoted from), the following extracts are to 
the point : 
“Samples of the China stock, imported originally from 
Shanghai, were very plentiful on this occasion, and very 
superior fowls, bred from G-. P. Burnham’s importations, 
were numerous, and were sold in four or five instances at the 
very highest prices paid for any samples disposed of.” 
Among the premiums awarded, as per report, at this fourth 
show (in 1852), were the “first prizes for best trio, to H. H. 
Williams (Burnham’s stock); first for best cock and hen, 
to Chas. Sampson (Burnham’s stock) ; second and third 
prizes to Williams, same (Burnham’s stock) ; a first prize to 
C. C. Plaisted, for 1 Hong Kong ’ fowls, then so called by 
contributor (from Burnham’s stock) ; to A. White, six best 
chickens (Burnham’s stock) ; to same, for best Cochin cock 
and hen, first prize (Burnham’s stock) ; to Williams, West 
Roxbury, best trio of Cochins, first premium (Burnham’s 
stock) ; to A. White, for best Cochin chickens, first (Burn- 
ham’s stock),” etc., etc. 
All this is somewhat of a personal character, I know, hut 
I am now writing “ reminiscences ” of the old days ; of events 
in chicken-history that occurred over twenty years since. 
From the above data it will be seen that several months prior 
to the time (December, 1852) when I shipped the mature 
“ Gray Shanghais” to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to wit: 
in the spring of 1852, I exhibited old Shanghai fowls, and 
their progeny, three, two, and one year old. In the fall of 
the same year my patrons, who had bred fowls from Cochin 
or Shanghai chickens, or eggs purchased of me in 1850, ’51, 
carried away all the leading premiums, with this young 
stock of the grays, reds, huffs, etc., and that not until the 
year 1852 (in September) had the proper name of this fine 
stock been called in question. It was rightfully “ Shanghai.” 
But, from and after this show, began the contest that re- 
sulted in naming this much maligned race “Brahmas” 
and “Cochins,” of different colors, though I continued to 
call my stock “Shanghais,” for many years afterwards. 
Englishmen (through the Queen’s Chinese fowls) had, 
previously to this time, for four or five years been breeding 
what they called Cochin Chinas ; and this name had come 
to be accepted by the Society members and British Poultry 
Clubs as 11 the thing, you know,” in the course of a few 
years later. Meantime, early American breeders of the 
Marsh, Forbes, and Burnham Shanghais had begun to find 
a very good market in England for selected samples of these 
strains, and especially of the Gray Shanghais; and Dr. 
Bennett, Capt. Williams, W. Buckminster, and myself, sent 
hundreds of pairs and trios of this Shanghai stock abroad 
to the delight and astonishment of the fanciers in Great 
Britain. 
It has been latterly stated, I observe, that in 1854 and ’57 
some importations of fowls were made into England direct 
from Shanghai — Partridge-colored, I think. But the Eng- 
lish breeders persisted in calling the Gray Shanghais they 
got from America (as they did these last-named birds from 
that port) Cochins or Brahmas. No longer Cochin- Chinas, 
as at first, never Shanghais (what they were), but Cochins 
or Brahmas, they said. And to-day “ so say we all,” though 
I had always contended for the one true name “ Shanghais ” 
of different colors. 
As I stated in my opening paragraph, the Shanghais have 
been fearfully abused and maligned — on paper — in past 
years. They were called homely, gawky, ravenous, clumsy, 
ill-favored, long-legged monsters, and though everybody 
was at once astonished and interested, in greater or less 
degree, at this novelty among chickens when it appeared, 
but few fanciers took hold of it at first with any zeal. The 
breed worked its own way, however, and after a year or 
two, despite the abuse, and ridicule, and nick-naming heaped 
upon it, privately and publicly, it came to be largely sought 
for, and a rare furore eventually succeeded to obtain good 
samples of these Shanhais, in England as well as all over 
this country. 
Now, the originally imported Shanghai fowl, of different 
colors ( not the original Queen’s Cochin-Chinas), was, in no 
particular, different from the so-denominated Cochin of to- 
day. The requirements of the standards, here and in Eng- 
land, describe the same points possessed by the early birds 
almost precisely ; and old breeders, who have watched the 
progress in poultry “improvements,” here and abroad, for 
twenty-five years, know this. But — 
“What’s in a name? 
A rose, by any other name , will smell as sweet.” 
I notice in Mr. Wright’s latest work on poultry that Mr. 
Cornish, under date of a letter to Colonel Weld in 1869, 
states (among other gross inaccuracies in said letter) that 
“ in 1850 the name Brahma-Pootra was established /” And 
further on Mr. Wright says that “ this was .the stock fos- 
tered by Mr. Cornish and Dr. Bennett.” But, in Dr. Ben- 
nett’s own “ Poultry Book,” published here in 1850, the 
name of Brahma or Brahma-Pootra is not alluded to once, 
while my original Philadelphia (Dr. J. J. Kerr) “Gray 
Shanghais,” then called by Drs. Kerr and Bennett “ Cliitta- 
gongs ” (precisely as Cornish calls his stock, in his March 
2d, 1852, letter), are both finely illustrated and fully de- 
scribed by Bennett (see pp. 26, 27, 28) as “ perfect sam- 
ples ;” “ remarkable for size and beauty ;” “ the first among 
domestic varieties of fowls;’’ the true gallus gigantous-," 
and they “ excite astonishment and admiration in all fowl- 
fanciers who behold them,” etc. At the close of this book 
— last page — Dr. Bennett adds: “It will be observed that 
the descriptions in this work begin with Mr. Burnham’s im- 
perial Gray Chittagong,” etc. Now, if (as Cornish says) 
this “ Brahma” name was “ established in 1850,” why does 
not Dr. Bennett (who originated it) somewhere in his ex- 
tensive “ Poultry Book” mention it? Mr. Cornish or his 
fowls, of course, were not then known to anybody, for Ben- 
nett was the first man in America to broach this subject of 
a new-fangled name for the fine Gray Shanghai birds, and 
Wright admits this. This is but another mistake of Cor- 
nish’s, in the date of the year. And one word more upon 
this point : 
As far forward from this time as in 1854, the judges at 
the national exhibition, in New York, in their official 
report on that show, say : “ Though we have been governed 
by the nomenclature in the lists, we by no means assent to 
it as a proper classification. Shanghai and Cochin are con- 
vertible terms, but Brahma-Pootra is a name for a sub- 
variety of Shanghais, plainly.” And “we earnestly insist 
that all ridiculous, unmeaning aliases for fowls be abandoned, 
and a simple, truthful classification in name be strictly ob- 
served in the future,” etc. Compare this with my quota- 
tion above from the Boston judges’ report, in 1852, and then 
let anybody declare, if they can truthfully, that “ this name 
Brahma was established in 1850!” 
Melrose, Mass., June, 1874. 
