258 FANCIERS’ 

engaged rooms for us at the Bloomer House, and entered 
our names on the register to secure them. This fact was 
brought up in the debate at Buffalo, and there, on the floor 
of the house, publicly refuted by Mr. Estes. And yet, I am 
told, the lie was still persisted in at Boston, to influence, 
those who were not present at Buffalo. 
Mr. Estes also publicly called the attention of this honor- 
able and truthful President of ‘the strongest, most pros- 
perous, and dignified body of men ever assembled_together 
for any honorable purpose,’ to the fact that action could 
only be taken against the society, and not against the indi- 
vidual; but, no! the ‘‘boss”’ ruled otherwise, and his pliant 
tools did as they were bad(e). I do not wish to be under- 
stood as saying that all the members of the Association 
were under the influence of the ‘ Ring ;’’ far from it. I 
know that by far the larger portion of the members will re- 
pudiate with indignation the actions of those who have used 
their high positions to carry out their own petty malignant 
schemes. I know that a number took strong ground against 
such hasty action in the matter; but the ‘‘ boss”? had sent 
forth his decree and, according to the law of the Ring, 
which hateth him they have injured, the decree must be 
enforced. 
I have taken legal advice upon this matter, and there is 
nota doubt but that the President and Board of Officers have 
laid themselves open to an action for libel. Whether I 
shall take this course or not will depend a great deal upon 
future events. My lawyer advises me that I am still a 
member of the American Poultry Association ; that the res- 
olution passed is null and void, being illegal for the reasons 
heretofore stated. 
With this I shall drop the matter through the press, un- 
less forced to reply to other attacks. 

A. M. Hatstep. 
Ryf®, N. Y., April 10, 1874. 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
REMINISCENCES OF THE ‘‘HEN FEVER.” 
BY GEO. P. BURNHAM. 
The Cochin fowl is a good domestic bird. Its true his- 
tory, in a few sentences, may prove interesting to your 
readers, though a vast deal has been written and said 
hitherto for and against this stalwart representative of the 
gallus giganteus. It occurred to me to set down among the 
‘¢ Reminiscences’? I am writing for the Fanciers’ Journal 
what I know about this variety upon seeing in your 
columns or elsewhere recently that ‘the first Partridge 
Cochins were imported into England in 1847 ’’—a statement 
I never before met with, and which is unquestionably an 
error in date. 
The first Cochins (or Cochin Chinas) of which we have 
any modern account, so far as I am informed, were sent 
from China by the British ambassador there, to Her Majesty 
Queen Victoria, in 1843 or 1844. The monstrous propor- 
tions of these fowls astonished the people of England vastly, 
and the English illustrated journals were shortly occupied 
with pictures and accounts of these giant chickens, which 
were a huge novelty to Messrs. John Bull. 
They were wonderful in dimensions and carriage, extra- 
ordinary layers (Mr. Walters, the Queen’s poultry-keeper, 
verifying some one’s curious statement that ‘‘ the hens laid 
two eggs in a day frequently, and sometimes three’’). They 
were hardy, flame-colored, very quiet, and altogether were 
a most valuable acquisition to the poultry of the old coun- 

JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGH. 
try, as everybody, on sight of them, admitted. These 
‘‘Cochins’’ were perfectly smooth-legged, and Harrison 
Weir’s pictures of them in the London Illustrated News, 
‘““by royal permission,” gave very accurate portraits of this 
rare consignment, which at that time (1844) were described 
as belonging to the family of the Otis tarda, or Great Bustard, 
from their kindred formation and immense size. 
I read these accounts, saw the engravings in the London 
papers, and in 1847 sent to England for half a dozen of 
them. The Queen presented a prize pair to Lord Heyts- 
bury, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and he sent them to 
J. Joseph Nolan, of Bachelor’s Walk, Dublin, to breed. I 
communicated with Mr. Nolan, and finally purchased two 
cocks and four pullets of this Queen Victoria ‘ Cochin 
China”’ stock, which were the first Cochins imported into 
America by a citizen of the United States by at least two 
years in pointof time. I bred these smooth-legged fowls, 
with others that I received subsequently from Canton 
for several years, and disposed of hundreds of fine birds 
from this stock, though I never thought them equal to the 
Gray Shanghais (or Brahmas) by a long mark. 
These were the original ‘‘Cochins,”’ however. They 
were so called by the English breeders, and this name, for 
the .Queen’s stock, was never changed. Why they were 
denominated ‘‘ Cochin Chinas’’ no one has ever yet been 
able to determine. Certainly they never saw Cochin China, 
and nobody in that Southern Chinese province ever saw any 
such fowls there. Mr. Fortune, who was for a long time a 
resident and traveler in the East, says that ‘ whoever thus 
named these birds has much to answer for, since denizens of 
Cochin China say of these fowls, when subsequently seen by 
them, that they astonished those people quite as much as 
the sight had exercised Englishmen.’’ Still, these were the 
first known ‘ Cochin Chinas,’’ of which, as I have stated, I 
imported the first of their progeny into Massachusetts. 
The Cochins of to-day are heavily feathered upon the 
legs, as we all know. I received from China, fifteen or 
twenty years ago, three or four different lots of variously 
colored fowls, most of which were thus feathered to the 
toes. 
Cochin Chinas,”’ to distinguish them from the others, which 
I denominated White, Buff, Brown, or Gray Shanghais, be- 
cause the latter (with the exception of one lot I imported 
from Canton) all came direct from Shanghai. 
In course of time other parties imported fowls from Eng- 
land or China, and the poultry societies in Great Britain 
decided upon calling the Chinese fowls ‘Cochins.’”’ The 
American associations followed this lead; the “ standards of 
excellence’? discarded the name of Shanghais altogether 
from their lists, and adopting Dr. Bennett’s name for the 
grays and the English style for the other colors, we now 
have only the ‘‘ Cochins ” and ‘‘ Brahmas”’ for this Chinese 
stock, which is quite as well since everybody agrees to it. 
The original ‘‘Cochin Chinas’? imported into England, 
and first bred in this country in my yards, were quite un- 
like the present fowls bearing this name, as I have briefly 
stated. The modern ‘‘Cochin” is a far better bird in all 
respects. At that early day, however (near thirty years 
since), the first-comers were deemed very extraordinary 
fowls, and I sent samples of these chickens all over this 
country for years afterwards. They have quite run out 
now. I have not seen a smooth-legged ‘‘ Royal Cochin”? 
for many a day. 
As to Partridge Cochins, the first I ever met with were 
In the case of my Cochins I called them ‘ Royal ~ 
all 
