38 



THE ORPINGTONS 



the originators of the Orpingtons having agreed to see all 

 classes filled. Mr. Wm. Cook, Senior, had made arrange- 

 ments to be present this year with four pens but was pre- 

 vented by sickness. 



"The American Orpington Club held its first annual 

 meeting and' elected Mr. C. E. Vass, president; Mr. Frank 

 W. Gaylor, vice-president; Mr. Wallace P. Willett, secre- 

 tary and treasurer; Mr. P. Kyle and Mr. C. E. Faber, 

 members of executive committee. Standards were adopted 

 for all the varieties. A new paper appeared called 'The Orp- 

 ington,' by Wallace P. Willett, devoted entirely to the in- 

 terest of the breeders of the fashionable, fancy and utility 

 of Orpingtons, 1-cent stamp for copy. This paper gives 

 the English Standards of all the Orpingtons and a fine 

 illustration of a typical 

 Black Orpington cock. The 

 wonderful progress made 

 by the Orpingtons in Eng- 

 land and the Colonies in 

 the few years since their 

 introduction is only a fore- 

 runner of what will come 

 about in the United 

 States." 



In 1903 came the flood- 

 tide boom of the Buflf Orp- 

 ingtons, when William 

 Cook arrived from Eng- 

 land with a ship-load of 

 Orpingtons of all varieties 

 and made such a display of 

 them at the Madison Square 

 Garden. That exhibit firmly 

 and permanently established 

 Buflf Orpingtons, as well 

 as the Black and White va- 

 rieties in America. The 

 boom was on in full blast, 

 and has shown no signs of 

 "blowing up." Buff Orping- 

 tons are here to stay. 



Buff 



Orpingtons 

 land 



Eng- 



'OW&H FARMS 



The late Lewis Wright 

 in his "Book of Poultry" re- 

 lates the history of the first 

 appearance of Buflf Orping- 

 tons in England as follows: 



"The first pair of Buflf 

 Orpingtons ever shown as 

 such were exhibited by Mr. 

 W. Cook, at the Dairy Show, 



October, 1894, when Mr. Cook drew our especial attention 

 to them, and made the same statement which has been 

 made on many other occasions, that they were produced 

 by mating a Golden-spangled Hamburg with a colored 

 Dorking hen, pullets from the produce being mated with 

 a Buflf Cochin cock; the main characteristic of the birds 

 being the combination of buflf plumage with white legs 

 and feet. We remarked on this earliest possible occasion, 

 that a fowl with such points might probably prove both 

 valuable and popular; but that there was grave objection 

 to calling them Orpingtons, since he had already appro- 

 priated that name to another fowl, which had, according 

 to his own account, not one single element in common. 

 He asserted, as he has done since, his right to 



call any fowl he introduced by any name he pleased; to 

 which we replied in substance, ■as expressed more 

 definitely later, that a breeder might justifiably use 'any 

 name he likes really open to him; but when a man has 

 already appropriated the name of his own residence to 

 one such breed, of which he tells us the components were 

 A, B, and C, there are the gravest objections to his giv- 

 ing, years afterwards, the same name, for merely trade 

 and advertising purposes, to another 'breed,' which, ac- 

 cording to 'his own account, has no particle of A, B. and 

 C, but was built up of X, Y, and Z.' Such nomenclature 

 would not have been allowed by the Poultry Association 

 of America, and objection to it was widely expressed by 

 the most prominent authorities in England with scarcely 



an exception; the already 

 existing Orpington Club 

 also protested against the 

 same name being given to 

 another fowl which had not 

 in it one atom of the same 

 constituent as theirs. A 

 considerable amount of dis- 

 cussion took place later 

 emphasized by the fact that 

 precisely similar fowls were 

 exhibited under another 

 name at the Smithfield 

 Show of dead poultry. Ow- 

 ing largely to this latter 

 circumstance, the question 

 was finally brought before 

 the Poultry Club, who de- 

 cided that it was then too 

 late to interfere, but inti- 

 mated that such a case 

 would not again be allowed 

 to pass unnoticed; and in 

 this way it is to be hoped 

 that the circumstances may 

 have produced a more 

 definite understanding con- 

 cerning such matters in the 

 poultry world." 



Of the subsequent de- 

 velopment of Buflf Orping- 

 tons by English breeders 

 Mr. Wright writes as fol- 

 lows: 



"There is an abund- 

 ance of evidence that all 

 breeders who took up the 

 new breed found plenty of 

 work to do in it, and 

 that some of them selected simply the best specimens 

 they could find, wherever they could find them, in Sur- 

 rey or Lincolnshire, or anywhere. That birds have been 

 bought in the latter county of people who have bred 

 nothing else for a quarter of a century, were shown di- 

 rectly as Buflf Orpingtons, and used by Buflf Orpington 

 breeders, is quite certain; and various successful strains 

 have no doubt had diflferent local' origins which accounts 

 for the fact stated by Mr. Richardson presently, of the 

 evil results found to follow from crossing these diflferent 

 strams. None of the early show specimens had the shape 

 of the Black Orpington, all being higher on the leg, longer 

 m the back, and less massive in the body; but breeders 



1MINQMmB05ToM-19|o. i 

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