THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— September 0, 1856. 427 
THE POULTRY CHB0W1SLE. 
POULTRY SHOWS. 
! Dorchester. Sept. 17 th and 18th. Sec., G. J. Andrews, Esq., Dor¬ 
chester. Entries close Sept. 1st. 
! Essex. At Colchester, 8th, 9th, and 10th of January, 1857 . Secs., 
G. E. Attwood, and W. A. Warwick. 
Gloucestershire. Nov. 26 th and 27 th. Sec., E. Trinder, Esq., 
Cirencester. Entries close Nov. 1 st. 
Leominster. Thursday, October 16. 
Nottinghamshire. At Southwell, December 17 th and 18th, 1856. 
Sec., Richard Hawksley, jun. Entries close November 19 th. 
i Nottingham Central Poultry Association. January 13, 14, and 
15. Hon. Sec. Frank Bottom. Secretary to the Canary Department , 
i Jno. Hetherington, jun., Sneinton. 
N.B .—Secretaries vtill oblige us by sending early copies of their lists. 
DUBBING OR TRIMMING AND MARKING 
GAME EOWLS. 
Now that the period has arrived when the juveniles of 
this class are, or ought to be, fit to draft, trim, and mark, it 
may not be esteemed out of season to say a few words 
concerning an operation usually undergone by this breed of 
fowl, especially as it is essential for show purposes to be 
somewhat particular in giving as good a figure as possible 
to the most prominent part of the bird. It shall not be my 
province to offer any remarks on the humanity or expediency 
of this procedure, but I shall run over laconically the mode 
of operation, the essentials, and the general things to be 
avoided. 
The comb of the Game Cock should be an upright, thin, 
round, well-serrated one, not very tall; rather let it be so 
than short and thick or piked behind. There is some little 
uncertainty in these essentials, as also the period when the 
dubbing should be performed ; both, in some degree, are 
influenced by the health, strength, age, and growth of the 
birds, as well as breed. Reds, greys, blues, blacks, and 
piles, have combs somewhat different; and only let a Malay 
have got into your strain at some early period, farewell to j 
all certainty on this head; his progeny will entail lots of 
trouble and polishing to conceal the foul blot. 
The operation to be performed is the removal of the comb ! 
| and wattles, whereby the former assumes the appearance of 
j a slightly-raised excrescence, sloping on either side from 
I base to summit, in form similar to a breastplate; the latter 
I are “ non sunt invents,’’ and have become an integral part 
j of the face and jaw. The mode of action is to cut off the 
1 comb with a knife or scissors thus:—An assistant secures 
j the bird by placing it under his arm, securing the j 
I legs with the same hand, and holding the neck and head | 
i straight out and steady in the position the operator requires, j 
j If a knife is the instrument used it is passed from before to ! 
behind whilst holding the comb steadily with the other 
hand, and requires much ready manipulation to make a 
sure and good job of it. The wattles, if cut off by the same 
process, is a more tedious operation. There is much non- 1 
sense talked of about the outer and inner skins : “ the outer | 
one must be cut through, and the inner one scooped out like I 
a wen inclosed in a peculiar sack." All this is stuff, and j 
from experience I have no difficulty in dubbing birds, and I 
am satisfied that the knife is an unfit instrument to use, ! 
and in the hands of a beginner a sure precursor of ruin to ! 
the patient’s beauty; and the reason is this—at the juncture 
of the upper bill with the skull there is an indentation, so 
that often, do what one will, the knife has a great tendency, 
and will, if the knife be kept as it ought to be, moderately 
close to the upper bill, to run down into this hollow, and as 
the blood obscures your work, and on you cut. I do not 
envy your feelings at the sequel, and a great hash is made 
of the wattles too; besides, I have often known a tyro cut a 
comb so closely as to expose the skull. All this is from using 
an agent which is difficult of management except by the 
; experienced. 
The simplest plan is to select a good, heavy, straight, 
sharp pair of scissors, and if one of the blades be some¬ 
what thick so much the better, as it prevents too close 
shaving. Well straighten the comb, place the same be¬ 
tween the blades of the apparatus front foremost, keep 
I_ 
your eye along the side of the comb to see the distance or 
height is all right, and, with a powerful and steady closing of 
the blades, off goes the member, leaving a straight rib only, 
and no pit; and as there generally is a little loose bit of 
comb near the nostrils and at some other particular spot, 
have near you a smaller pair of scissors, and with them 
just remove it. As to the wattles, with the same instrument 
cut them off closely. The edges will gape; never mind, remove 
them in totu. I must not go further into this matter just 
now, and will leave the marking and other essentials for 
another communication.—W. H., Exeter. 
LONGEVITY OF HENS. 
I have recently met with two instances, which I can, if 
necessary, substantiate by proof that no one can doubt. 
A hen, between twenty two and twenty-three years old, is 
now in good plumage and condition, and lays an average 
number of eggs. She has reared a brood of chickens within 
the last twelve months, and now wants to sit, but her wish 
is not gratified. The number of eggs and chickens pro¬ 
duced by this bird, and estimated at a fair market value, , 
would startle any one. 
In the second caso the hen is eighteen years old, and I 
lays well; she has been allowed to sit, butlaclcing, probably, 1 
the necessary warmth, she has not hatched the last two i 
sittings entrusted to her. Her owner, with creditable kind- j 
ness, gave her some chickens hatched by another hen ; | 
she was delighted with them, and reared them all.—J. B. 
BRAHMA POOTRAS. 
The writer of this never entertained but one opinion 
relative to these birds. When pure, he has always thought 
them to be merely a variety of the Shanghae, or Cochin- 
China; and that when they have Pea combs, and one or 
two minor variations, that then they have a taint of Malay 
blood in them. That they are merely a variety of the 
Shanghae is sustained by the fact that from Brahma 
Pootras Lord de Blaquiere bred Black Shanghaes! 
We write this in answer to Ergo, and we add the follow¬ 
ing as confirming our opinion. 
Mr. Burnham, in his “ History of the Hen Fever,” makes 
the following statement:— 
“When, in 1850 and ’51, the ‘ Bother'ems' begun to be 
brought into notice, I saw at once that, although this was 
bubble number two, it ought to have been number one de¬ 
cidedly. 
“ Never was a grosser hum promulgated than this was, 
from beginning to end, even in the notorious hum of the 
hen-trade. There was absolutely nothing whatever in it, 
about it, or connected with it, that possessed the first shade 
of substance to recommend it, saving its name. And this 
could not have saved it, but from the fact that nobody (not 
even the originator of the unpronounceable cognomen him¬ 
self) was ever able to write or spell it twice in the same 
manner. 
“ The variety of fowl itself was the Grey Chittagong, to 
which allusion has already been made, and the first samples 
of which I obtained from ‘Asa Rugg ’ (Dr. Ken’), of 
Philadelphia, in 1850. Of this no one now entertains a 
doubt. They were the identical fowl all over,—size, 
plumage, and characteristics. 
“ But my friend the Doctor wanted to put forth something 
that would take better than his ‘Plymouth Rocks;’ and 
so he consulted me as to a name for a brace of grey fowls 
I saw in his yard. I always objected to the multiplying of 
titles; hut he insisted, and finally entered them at our 
Fitchburg Depot Show as ‘ Burrampooters,’ all the way 
from India. 
“ These three fowls were bred from Asa Rugg’s Grey 
Chittagong cock, with a yellow Shanghae hen, in Plymouth, 
Mass. They were an evident cross, all three of them j 
having a top-knot! But, n'hnporte. They were then ‘ Bur¬ 
rampooters.’ 
“ Subsequently, these fowls came to be called ‘ Buram- 
pootras,’ ‘ Burram Putras,’ ‘ Brama-pooters,’ 1 Brahmas,’ j 
