Langshans. 
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Cochin type all over. They are better Cochins, in fact, according to modern ideas, than any of 
the portraits of Cochins in the original “ Poultry Book,” as drawn by Mr. Harrison Weir. 
The long-legged and squirrel-tailed type was also very characteristic, but there were weighty 
reasons for objecting to it as we persistently did. First, it spoilt the Langshan as a table-fowl, 
for long legs are a great blemish, and many of this type had also poor breasts in comparison. This 
type was also peculiarly subject to leg-weakness. Not only did more applications to us for advice 
on this complaint come from owners of this fowl than from all other breeds together, but in the 
early “standard” published in “The Langshan Fowl,” it was actually found necessary to put leg- 
weakness in the scale of defects , with a penalty of twenty points ; a fact which speaks volumes. 
The high tail was, moreover, peculiarly liable to wry tail, which we noted in the pens repeatedly. 
Last of all, it was very ugly. These are the chief reasons why we contended, since the day we first 
saw it, for the type which has now won the day. 
It will thus appear that at least three different, well-marked types have appeared, besides 
minor gradations. There was the decidedly Cochin type, with fluff, and wide stern, and Cochin 
carriage, shown in the original portraits ; there was the long-legged, tucked-up, squirrel-tailed 
type so persistently advocated, with an extra long pair of sickles in the tail ; and there was 
from 1878 gradually recognised the medium or short-legged type, with full but flowing tail, 
and “ Hamburgh “ symmetry. But even this by no means exhausts the marked variations 
observed. In a letter dated March 26, 1886, Miss Croad states that she had received twelve 
importations, in three of which came tufted hens ; in another came a rose-combed cock ; some 
were so small that Bantams could easily have been produced ; and two birds were bare-legged. 
Mr. Thomson’s importations presented practically the same features, except that in his the pro- 
portion of bare-legged was nearly one-fourth of the whole. It is impossible not to reconsider, in the 
face of these facts, the question of the real origin of the fowl ; and whereas we formerly considered 
Langshans a pure but not a distinct breed, we are now compelled to regard them as having real 
claims to distinctness, but these entirely depending upon selection of the most eligible of the features 
resulting from their being a made or cross breed, but probably so made accidentally and long ago. 
The Rev. C. W. Hamilton has done much to clear up this matter in some articles published 
in Poultry during the year 1886, though we do not coincide in quite all his conclusions. It 
is necessary to premise that the Cochin itself is clearly a mixture of races, and hence we find 
it bursting out continually into long legs, and when crossed to “improve” farm poultry, always 
doing so. Mr. Hamilton then notices that Temminck’s Gallus morio , or Negro Fowl, pro- 
bably of southern origin, was not the Silky as now known, though the Silky is its chief modern 
descendant. Its chief points were black legs, purple or dark combs, bluish skin, and dark 
periosteum, or membrane covering its small bones. Mr. Hamilton states — and his statements 
on this head were never controverted — that the Langshan very often has a bluish -white 
skin, and that he has frequently observed the characteristic dark periosteum on the bones ; 
while it is notorious that Langshans very often exhibit a distinctly purple tinge about the 
head and comb — not as the result of ill-health, but evidently as a tendency to colour in the 
fowl. But the most remarkable fact is the strange tendency to breed Silky fozvls which dis- 
tinguishes it. The same gentleman collects evidence that a Silky appeared about 1878 in 
Mr. Housman’s yard from a pair of birds hatched from eggs of Miss Croad’s, and Mr. 
Housman also observed several silky Langshans in a neighbour’s flock of undoubted purity. 
The Rev. A. C. Davies bred one in 1883, from Mr. Bush’s cup cockerel (Croad strain), and 
hens hatched from Croad eggs : the pedigree of this case was at first disputed, but afterwards 
admitted. Two years later Mr. Davies bred another from eggs of Mr. Orme’s (also Croad 
