Origin of the Dark Brahma. 
257 
Burnham was determined to have every fowl a “ Shanghae,” and no other. This fact once 
understood, the rest is perfectly clear. 
These later facts raise some interesting speculations as to the separate or similar origin 
of the Dark Brahma. We formerly thought that the Darks were from the same originals as 
the Lights, and we are still not sure about this ; for though Burnham denies it with indignation, 
and claims the Dark* as his particular “ patent,” he unluckily, in an unguarded moment 
(contradictory to the last), avers that “ both the Dark and Light were bred from the same 
originals, precisely, at first.” He is therefore in the same difficulty as we are on that point. 
Still, knowing from Mr. Teebay how nearly all the Darks for years came from near Boston, we 
are disposed to think he had something peculiar to do with these, and we think the method 
is not far to seek. We have seen that Dr. Bennett had bred from his Chittagongs some 
fine really grey birds, and called them first “ Burrampooters,” afterwards dropping them and 
giving that name to the Cornish stock. What more natural than that this should give 
Burnham the idea of breeding more himself, and putting them in competition with the new 
breed ? We willingly believe — seeing we now know the Chittagongs themselves had come from 
India, and that the new Cornish birds, though different in colour, are said to have “in some 
degree” resembled them — that there were great resemblances in all bat colour; and we would 
trust the man really believed in a common origin, though in the face of Dr. Kerr’s statement 
he must have known it was an Indian one. We think it likely, in fact, that these grey 
Chittagongs were of closely allied race to the lighter fowls ; and they may have been bred 
from the same pair even, since in Miner’s “Poultry Book” there is a remarkable letter from 
Mr. Moore stating that “ the Brahma Pootra fowls are very dark in many instances.” If so, 
this may answer Burnham’s sneer at the 1846 date, and his question (“China Fowl,” p. 95), 
“ Can either of this hopeful trio [Cornish, or Weld, or Wright] tell us where these remarkable 
birds were secreted from 1846 or 1847 up to 1850 and 1851, that nobody knew of or had 
ever seen them?” It may be the “Chittagongs” were offsets from them, crossed or not, and 
bred from the darker shades. It is worth notice that The Broad Arrow y a paper devoted 
to the Civil Services, and which has much Indian correspondence, in controversy with us 
attributes the Brahma to the “big fowls” found “around the port of Chittagong;” that an 
old Indian officer in writing us said, “ The fowl you make so much fuss about is the 
Chittagong fowl, of which I have seen hundreds in India;” and that several other letters in 
print, down from The Northern Farmer in 1855, state similar fowls exist in India still. If, 
then, Burnham later on purchased Cornish Brahmas and crossed them with his own really 
grey stock from Dr. Kerr — stock he says came from China, but which Dr. Kerr himself says 
came from India — he crossed them with birds any way from the same locality, and which “in 
some degree resembled ” them except in colour, as even Cornish says. He may have been 
crossing them — the purest and best-preserved descendants of the original stock — with 
darker offsets from the very same root bred with less care ; or it may have been another 
importation. But either way, we think that upon the whole, while both the Dark and Light 
probably came in the main from the very same Chamberlain stock, the origin of the Darks is 
in this way best accounted for. 
To sum up. Of the Chamberlain origin of the Light Brahmas there can be no doubt 
whatever. In all the disputes of that old time, Mr. Cornish is about the only one who seems to 
come out of the business quite clear. In all the others— Bennett, Miner, and Plaisted, as 
* The very fact that he does so is a curious proof of a consciousness he cannot get rid of, tbai he had nothing to do with the 
Light Brahmas. 
