248 
The I llvstratfd Book of Poultry. 
substance of which was reprinted in a book entitled “ The China Fowl.” To show the character 
of his statements a very few sentences will be sufficient : — 
I repeat it : I was utterly ignorant of the virulence, the total falsity, the bitter misrepresentations, the carping, silly, 
unwarrantable language you had adopted towards me in your two books [“The Brahma Fowl” and “The Illustrated Book 
of Poultry ” are here referred to] until the last few weeks, when I for the first time had access to these ignorantly composed 
and miserably spirited volumes ! Wherein have I ever offended you, that you should thus in your books blackguard, malign, 
vilify, and prate like a hen with a sore head about Burnham this, and Burnham that ? I am a gentleman, sir, by nature, 
education, fortune ; and never did a human being wrong, so help me God, to my knowledge, in my life. 
You misquote me, you interpolate your extracts from others, you put terms and phrases and sentences into my mouth in 
your book, and into others’ mouths, that we never wrote, or uttered, or contemplated. Thus you falsify, and garble, and 
misrepresent us all — for -what ? Simply to sustain your own sophistry and assumed theory, which is utterly baseless, as well as 
detestable. — American Fancier's Journal , Nov. 26, 1874. 
There is much of this kind of language, but it is unnecessary here to quote more of it 
than enough to show the necessity of now dealing with the whole question thoroughly, though 
we of course shall not attempt to imitate Mr. Burnham’s style of writing. 
As to what he was “ by nature, education, fortune,” we do not know that it matters much. 
All that is certain, and all that is very material, is that — in the small space of six years ending 
in 1855 — Burnham had, according to his own admission, amassed by his dealings in the 
“poultry mania,” a fortune of no less than thirty thousand dollars. The means by which 
he did this are not only admitted, but gloried in ; and the statements from such a quarter 
are naturally to be received with some caution. However, such as they are, those statements 
must now be considered. 
First of all, it should be stated that the above gross charges of misquotation, garbling, &c., 
are entirely founded upon one question of words. A few sentences will make this clear ; both 
paragraphs are from letters published by Burnham in the Fancier s Journal of America. 
And to sum up briefly, I will now say to Mr. Wright, you have entirely misapprehended this whole “ Brahma” origin matter, 
so far as / am concerned. You have assailed me and my fowls for no good reason under God’s heavens. I never had anything 
whatever to do with your “Brahma” fowls, about which you make such an ado ! I never wished to ; I never bred, bought, 
borrowed, kept, or had any “ Brahmas” during the first twenty years of the poultry mania, from 1848 forward. Mr. Cornish does 
not say a word about me ; and that gentleman and myself have never had any variance whatever, either written or verbal. In his 
letter he does not talk of Mr. Burnham or about “Brahmas.” He calls his fowls “ Chittagongs ” then, as Dr. Kerr and Mr. 
Chamberlin did. Afterwards, they called them “ Brahma-Pootras,” I believe, as they had the right to do, just as I had always 
called mine “ Grey Shanghais,” by the same right ; as they (and Mr. Wright ought to) very well know. 
In his next paragraph, page 12 [this refers to the first edition of “The Brahma Fowl”], he says, “Mr. Burnham states that 
the dark breed were Grey Chittagongs crossed with Cochins.” I never made any such statement, and you cannot find it on the 
record. It is you, Mr. Wright, who made every one of these statements (in this form) in your books, to help sustain your utterly 
erroneously conceived theory, regarding what you have written about so ignorantly. You have used the terms “Cochin,” and 
“Brahma,” and “Chittagong” in your books to suit your fancy, instead of the terms “ Shanghais,” “Grey Shanghais,” &c., as I 
used them. 
Now it is certainly true that we had in writing discarded the obsolete title of Shanghai, and 
substituted the modern one of Cochin, which has now taken its place. But then we were, as we 
supposed, writing about things, not about names. We had expressly said in the former edition of 
this work that “ the matter in dispute is not a question of name,” and only pretended to deal with 
the origin of the fowl ; and as to the name of Brahma, we had stated fairly and fully Burnham’s 
protest against it. More than this: Mr. Burnham, in his own “New Poultry Book,” 
published in 1871, expressly states that Mr. Tegetmeier has throughout given the correct 
account, and dealt with himself “but justly;” and he knew very well that the statement he says 
above was made by us to sustain our theory, was made, on the contrary, by Mr. Tegetmeier to 
sustain his theory, and is quoted by us as from that gentleman. But further still, whatever we have 
done has been done by Burnham himself. The first two paragraphs following are from his 
“Poultry Book” of 1871, and the second two from a letter he published in 1870 : — 
I never claimed aught but this, that my Grey Shanghais, or Brahmas, were the first bred in Massachusetts, and the first (of 
both Light and Dark) that were sent to England from America. — p. 160. 
