38 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
took its rise from the largely developed ear-lobes of the birds, and the description 
of the power of doubling the wing obviously took its rise from the observation of 
specimens with twisted primary quill feathers — a defect, it is hardly necessary 
to inform the Cochin breeder, much more frequently found in that variety 
than in any other. The birds figured by the artist, and described in the para- 
graph quoted, were what would now be regarded as very bad, stilty, clean-legged 
partridge Cochins, the hens having well-pencilled plumage, and the cocks having 
brown breasts, with a horse-shoe or crescentic mark of black. 
Notwithstanding the introduction of these birds, however, Cochins remained 
comparatively unknown for some years. 
At the poultry show held at the Gardens of the Eoyal Zoological Society, 
Regent’s Park, in May, 1845, there were prizes especially offered for “ Malays and 
other Asiatic breeds but these brought to the exhibition no other Eastern variety 
than Malays ; and the celebrated stocks of Mr. Moody and Mr. Sturgeon were 
not obtained by them until the year 1847. Respecting the latter, Mr. Sturgeon 
gives the following details : — 
“ The history of my Cochins is a very absurd tale, and full of ill-luck, or perhaps 
carelessness — a term for which ill-luck is often substituted. I got them in 1847 
from a ship in the West India Docks. A clerk we employed at that time happened 
to go on board, and, struck by the appearance of the birds, bought them on his 
own responsibility, and at what I, when I came to hear of it, denounced as a most 
extravagant price — some 6s. or 8s. each ! Judge of my terror, after my extra- 
vagance, when I found a younger brother had, immediately on their arrival, killed 
two out of the five, leaving me a cockerel and two pullets ; nor was my annoyance 
diminished on hearing him quietly remark that they were very young, fat, and 
heavy, and would never have got any better ! The cock shortly after died, and, 
beyond inquiring for another, which I succeeded in obtaining shortly after 
the original died, together with a number of hens which reached this country 
under peculiar circumstances, I personally took but little interest in them till the 
eve before their departure for Birmingham, 1850. Neither my brother nor 
myself, before we obtained these birds, had taken any particular interest in 
poultry, and why we came to prefer the light-coloured birds still remains a 
mystery to me : but so it was. I have often laughed at the dreadful passes my 
now famous breed has been reduced to, and the very narrow escapes it has had of 
utter extinction, — first the attack of my brother, already narrated ; then the death 
of the cock ; and, in the third year, the incursions of some mischievous greyhound 
puppies, who killed, one morning, five young birds, just as they were getting 
feathered, besides many more on different occasions. Our birds all came from 
Shanghae, and were feather-legged. It is to the cock of the second lot that I 
attribute our great success. I have had fifty others since, in four or five lots, but 
not a bird worthy of comparison with my old ones.” 
As in the case of many other varieties of fowls. Cochins are known popularly by 
a name to which they have no claim. Mr. Robert Fortune, who has passed many 
