4H 
The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 
on it. But it has throughout been my ill-fortune, out of many imported pens of a cock and two 
huis each, to lose one, generally a hen, within a week or two of their arrival, and the others have 
had a severe illness from the same sickness, apparently severe cold and roup. Once over this 
attack, impoited birds have proved perfectly hardy in every way. I have generally found them to 
be larger-fiamed birds than I could produce here, but not showing nearly so much breeding in 
form, feather, crest, or comb as the birds produced from my original stock that had been carefully 
matched for years, with an occasional admixture of imported stock. I found, too, that imported 
biids were very much more liable to variegation of white and golden feathers than English-bred 
birds, and, as a rule, after their second season they were useless for exhibition purposes. 
“The chickens reared here I have never found so precocious as has been stated. In this 
Fig. 91 . — Head cf Crevecceur Cock. 
district they are especially difficult to rear, and suffer to an unusual extent from cold and roup, to 
which they fall easy victims. As compared with any of the hardy breeds, say Brahmas or Cochins, 
I should not expect to rear one Crevecceur for three of the others. In all varieties of fowls a really 
fine specimen is a rarity, but a fairly good average quality is generally attainable ; but in Creve- 
coeurs, from the most carefully selected parents, I have found a very large proportion of most 
inferior birds, bad in feather, form, crest, or comb, and that birds at all approaching a quality fit 
for exhibition have been especially difficult to obtain.” 
These notes were written in 1871, and at that period all the accounts we were able to obtain 
from other breeders were pretty much to the same effect. But we were much interested to observe 
even then that there were evident signs of “ better days ” to come for the poor Creves, and that, 
although known and bred for many years without apparent improvement in constitution, there 
appeared some probability of their becoming, to a fair extent, “acclimatised” after all. We 
ventured to express a belief to this effect on various occasions, and were the more confirmed in it 
by hearing, on unimpeachable authority, that certain strains imported into the United States from 
France were found very fairly hardy, which would go far to prove that much depended on the 
