What Mr. Burniiam Claimed. 
249 
At the head of this list [of Asiatics] we unhesitatingly place the justly famous Brahmas [the small capitals are Mr. 
Burnham’s, and not ours], a variety that has enjoyed an unexampled popularity for twenty years. — p. 149. 
I know something of this fowl (or ought to), and find myself justly credited by Mr. Tegetmeier, in his exhaustive and superb 
“Poultry Book,” with having introduced into England from this country the first Dark Brahmas. 
Previously (in 1852) I had sent to her Majesty Queen Victoria a flock of mature Light Brahmas. 
It is not true that Burnham had been the first to send Brahmas to England, Dr. Bennett 
having sent some to Mrs. Hosier Williams previously; but this will be enough to show that the 
alleged misrepresentations are no more and no less than a use of words precisely as Burnham 
has used them himself, in order to avoid outlandish and obsolete terms. Nay, in the same 
“ Poultry Book ” above alluded to, he quotes with approval a statement by a Mr. Pitman, that 
the Brahmas, dark and light, “ are the proditct of the union of the Buff Cochin hens with the Grey 
Chittagong cock ” (the italics are his own), though this is the very statement charged as false 
above when said to be made by us, though really by Mr. Tegetmeier. 
But there is another question related to the name which is more important, in the same 
letter, quoted on page 242, Burnham says : — “ I never had aught to do with praising the Brahma 
fowl /” and again — “Thus Mr. Wright is a good witness that the fowls I had (pre-supposing that 
1 ever had any) were not of this Cornish-Chamberlain, Chittagong, or Brahmapootra strain. This 
settles one point clearly. But I had better ones. ” If any meaning can be gathered from these 
two assertions, it would be that Burnham admitted the strain just described did exist, and were 
the originals of the Brahmas, but that his were different, and never confounded, and were 
Shanghais (now called Cochins). This statement, explicit as it is, is, however, flatly contradicted 
by the others just quoted. In fact, it seems difficult to pin Mr. Burnham down to any state- 
ment whatever ; still this one statement that he never “ had any difference ” with Mr. Cornish, 
or “anything to say to him or his fowls,’’ he does repeat very strongly. Here is another 
quotation from the Fancier s Journal of July 30, 1874 : — 
My controversy is not [ and never has been ) with Messrs. Cornish or Chamberlain, Dr. Bennett or Colonel Weld. They have 
been allowed by me to tell their stories, in their own way, about their fowls, which never interfered with me or mine, until Mr. 
Wright tortured their accounts into some remote connection with what I had written and said about my own birds ; while I never 
alluded to this other stock , and did not claim ( but always denied !) that anybody's “ Brahmapootras" were my “ Grey Shanghais 
though I still believe, as Dr. Bennett stated to Dr. Gwynne in 1852, that my stock and the other “were precisely similar,” and that 
all were bred from the original Grey Shanghais. 
He again affirms, “I surely made no statement, oral or written, in which Mr. Cornish’s fowls 
were involved.” This is plain enough, and if it were only but true, we could accept our 
Brahmas as from Cornish, and let Burnham go his way with his. But that such is not the case 
— that Burnham was in hot and bitter controversy with Cornish and Dr. Bennett and others 
about this very thing, and that he did call their fowls “ Grey Shanghais,” and say they were the 
same as his own, the following extracts from scores of passages he himself wrote at the time 
and since will show : — 
The facts are, Dr. Bennett named these fowls, in my house, in presence of a third man now living, who stands ready to attest 
to it. He got up this sailor yarn about his finals, and others joined him. I never would, because I then had the lead on both sides 
of the Atlantic, and preferred my own stock to anybody’s. I have never regretted my course. 
Although Wright makes Cornish say that he got his fowls in 1849 first, and in 1846 afterwards, I knew when , where, and how 
this sailor “Brahmapootra” tale was concocted . — Turfi Field, and Farm, June 26, 1874. 
Dr. Bennett, of Great Falls, N.H., publishes a long article lately in The Northern Farmer , on the origin of the “Brahma- 
pootra” fowls. Now these fowls are Grey Shanghais ; that is to say, they originated in the city of Shanghai, China, and are grey 
in plumage The Chittagongs and these are perfectly identical, and all are of the great Chinese variety 
Still they are "beautiful specimens of poultry. But why not designate them correctly, and call them what they really are—" Grey 
Shanghais?” — New England Cultivator , June, 1852. 
For a time bubble number one, the Cochin Chinas, prevailed. . . Then came the Shanghais, ot different colours — as 
the yellow, the white, the buff, or the black — and took their turn. . . And, finally, came the Grey Shanghais, or 
“Chittagongs,” or “Brahmas,” as they were differently termed; and this proved bubble number two in earnest. . . No 
race of poultry ever had the run that did these Greys, under various names, both in this country and in England.— Hen Freer, 
1855, pp. 161, 162. 
It is now, therefore, proved by abundant documentary evidence that Mr. Burnham did set up 
