TYPES, BREEDS, AND VARIETIES OF FOWLS 387 



Divisions of the Asiatic meat type. The modern classification 

 of Asiatic fowls makes three breeds, — Brahma, Cochin, and Lang- 

 shan, — the order of mention being in accord with the relative 

 popularity of the breeds when the type was most popular. With 

 reference to the (supposed) original type of fowl the Cochin and 

 Langshan are earlier forms, the comb and some other characters 

 of the Brahma indicating 

 Asiatic Game blood which 

 undoubtedly mingled with 

 the other race from time 

 to time. 



Cochins. Early Ameri- 

 can and English Cochins 

 comprised four colors of 

 the Asiatic type, and (in at 

 least one of these colors) 

 a variety of shades. The 

 Buff Cochin, developed 

 from the most common 

 and popular color of the 

 Shanghai or Malay, was, 

 until near the close of 

 the last century, bred and 

 shown in all shades of buff, 

 from a lemon-yellow to a 

 brown called cinnamon- 

 buff. In these Buff Cochins 

 were found, as nowhere 



else among the fowls that came to the notice of early American 

 fanciers, the gradations of color from the black-red of the initial 

 type to white. The Pheasant or Partridge Cochin retained the 

 black-red coloration, with the brown colors of the female arranged 

 in lacings, — a pattern which seems to have been developed in 

 Asia, though not in the perfection in which it is now found in 

 our exhibition stocks of varieties carrying the pattern. At the 

 lower end of the scale of Asiatic colors was the White Cochin ; 

 at the upper end, the Black Cochin, commonly called the Java. 

 Of these varieties the Buff was, from the first, most popular, the 



Fig. 381. Buff Cochin cockerel. (Photograph 

 by Eugene J. Hall, Oak Park, Illinois) 



