16 THE HISTORY OV 



to England for information regarding the somewhat notori- 

 ous "Cochin-China" fowl, then creating considerable stir 

 among fanciers in Great Britain ; and soon learned that I 

 could procure them, in their purity, from a gentleman in 

 Dublin, whose stock had been obtained', through Lord 

 Heytshliry (then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland), direct from 

 Queen Victoria's samples. I ordered six of them, — two 

 cocks and four hens, — and in December, 1849, I received 

 them through Adams & Co.'s Transatlantic Express. 



At this period there was no telegraph established from 

 Boston to Halifax, I believe. Some of the reporters for the 

 daily city papers usually visited the steamers, upon their 

 arrivetl here, to obtain their foreign files of exchanges ; and 

 here my birds were firs*|B.een by those gentlemen who have 

 made or broken the prospects of more than one enterprise 

 of far greater consequence than this "importation of fancy 

 fowls" could seem to be. 



But on the day succeeding the coming of those birds, 

 several very handsome notices of the arrival of these august 

 Chinamen appeared in the Boston papers, and a vast 

 amount of credit was accorded to the " enterprising im- 

 porter" of the outlandish brutes, that were described in 

 almost celestial language ! 



After considerable trouble and swearing (custom-house 

 swearing, I mean), the officers on board permitted ugiy team 

 to take the cage out of the steamer, and it was conveyed to 



