TYPES, BREEDS, AND VARIETIES OF FOWLS 399 



either Light Brahma or White Cochin. Both varieties may have 

 been used, but the Drake stoclc showed pronounced traces of 

 Brahma rather than of Cochin blood. 



In March, 1869, Upham exhibited his birds as Barred Plymouth 

 Rocks, at Worcester, Massachusetts, where they made a sensation 

 and entered on a career of popularity so far-reaching that within 

 twenty years it was estimated that they outnumbered all other pure- 

 bred varieties of fowls in the United States. Their popularity had 

 brought out other varieties of the type and greatly stimulated inter- 

 est in them here, while in England the type, though of a color of 

 skin and legs not favored there, was rapidly displacing the Euro- 

 pean races, until an English style of the same type was produced 

 in the Orpington. 



Early strains of Barred Plymouth Rock. The instant popu- 

 larity of the Plymouth Rock ^ created a demand for them far be- 

 yond what could be supplied from the Spalding, Upham, and Drake 

 stocks. Those who were so fortunate as to secure stock from these 

 earliest originators had, if they used it to advantage, several years 

 the start of others. Many who could not get this stock made crosses 

 to produce the type. Though the facts in such cases would probably 

 not be recorded, no one who knows the ways of poultry breeding 

 can doubt that there were throughout the country many birds of 

 this type (in the rough), and that hundreds of breeders began to 

 mate such specimens as they had or could procure, using blood 

 from the more advanced lines of breeding when it could be ob- 

 tained. The best of the early strains were the Upham, Drake, 

 Oilman, and Essex, — the latter being an improved Upham strain, 

 developed first in Essex County, Massachusetts, by Mark Pitman, 

 and later by H. B. May at Natick, Massachusetts. This stock, though 

 the best of the early Plymouth Rocks, lacked much of meeting the 

 ideals of fanciers. The stock as it came into May's possession 

 seemed to lack stamina. He tried a Light Brahma cross on some 

 of it, with unsatisfactory results. Then he chanced on a cock de- 

 scribed as a grade Game, which he thought promised to give the 

 desired results. This bird (a black-red in color) had yellow legs 

 and a very full breast. The cross proved most satisfactory. In 



1 Until the white variety appeared, the term " barred " was not used. The breed 

 was simply the " Plymouth Rock." 



