FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY HXCHANGE. 

341 

best supported, and most convincing character, may such an 
account be disproved? and is Burnham’s sufficient to dis- 
prove it? We can only reply that no one but Mr. Teget- 
meier in England ever attached to any statement of Mr. 
Burnham’s the least importance whatever. Even he calls 
his great authority ‘unscrupulous,’ as well he might after 
the unblushing account of the motives which solely dictated 
the ‘present to her most Gracious Majesty;’ and among 
Americans themselves his book was never received with 
anything but a laugh at what was universally understood to 
be another attempt of the same sort at a trading puff. As 
an instance of this general appreciation of the man, we had 
quite recently an announcement from a valued American 
correspondent that, ‘our old friend Burnham had let himself 
out again,’ and were somewhat perplexed by the enigmatical 
information, until the receipt of a copy of Burnham’s New 
Poultry Book, published in 1871, elucidated the mystery. 
‘This second book was, in all respects, worthy of the first, 
being a series of advertising puffs in the most approved 
‘spread eagle’ style from beginning to end; and it especially 
amused us to note how the author had, with a most laudable 
regard to reciprocity, in return for Mr. Tegetmeier’s unhoped- 
for quotation of the former work, repaid the favor by 
quoting Ais as ample authority on the very same point; 
each thus referring to the other, and to the other alone, as 
confirming his own views! It is the simple fact that not 
one American writer (and but one English) ever regarded 
Burnham’s account as of the slightest value. Whether the 
latter may have bred amongst others very tolerable imita- 
tions of Brahmas, is, as we before observed, not the question. 
We had seen that there were two qualities of birds known 
in the early days—one a spurious, which bred mongrel pro- 
geny, and could be traced to Burnham; the other pure, 
which was always traced to Connecticut, or a little later, to 
Dr. Bennet, who procured his from that State. 
‘ But such, and accounts of such, published after the pure 
Brahmas were even publicly shown, cannot invalidate a con- 
sistent and credible account given from the very first of the 
genuine strain, and, as Mr. Cornish justly argues, confirmed 
and inquired into at the. time and on the spot while all the 
witnesses were alive and available for examination. Burn- 
ham himself states in his last work that he was a member 
of that very committee, at Boston, which was appointed in 
1850 to settle the name, as mentioned in Mr. Cornish’s letter 
to Colonel Weld. He says that the name was thus given by 
them ‘against his protest,’ and the unavoidable conclusion 
from that simple fact alone must be, that parties who knew 
both considered Mr. Cornish the most reliable witness of the 
‘To sum up, then: When to the foregoing conclusions 
are added the facts that all Mr. Burnham’s early Light 
Brahmas (until, as is known, he bought through a friend at 
Boston in 1852 some of the real strain), were single combed, 
while the originals were triple; that Burnham’s had a dis- 
tinct straw or buff tint, while the originals were white; and 
that Burnham’s had the same creamy-colored fluff, while 
real Brahmas had and still have a pearly-gray under the 
plumage, the whole becomes clear. It is plain that there 
was a strain of real Brahmas distinct from Cochins, or the 
fowls then known in America as Chittagongs (we say then 
known because our Indian friend’s remark makes it far from 
improbable that some previous importation of the Brahma, 
or real Chittagong, had given to the fowl so-called part if 
not the whole of its character—that our very fowl, in fact, 
had been imported before, but from want of interest in 
poultry so degraded as to be unrecognizable), all which were 
traced up to the birds brought into Connecticut by Mr. 
Chamberlain; that Burnham. having, as is clearly proved, 
vainly tried to purchase some of this stock, bred the best 
imitations he could, which formed another strain, always at 
that date clearly distinguishable from the real, and well 
known to be distinct both by himself and by others; and 
that, finally, he claimed for his the credit of being the 
original birds, and unfortunately found in England what he 
never could in America, a respectable writer who would 
without question adopt his tale. No other conclusion is 
hardly possible to any one who has passed in review the 
whole evidence from which we have extracted a small part 
in the particulars here given.”’ 


I design, in future articles, to notice the very severe and 
presumptuous criticisms of Mr. Burnham upon the ‘Buffalo 
Convention,” and the ‘Standard of Excellence.”’ 
We give place to the above article from our corre- 
spondent, ‘““F. R. W.,”? who makes such copious extracts 
from ‘‘ Mr. Wright’s Illustrated Book of Poultry,” because 
we are inclined to give our readers, who may not have seen 
that work, the opportunity to read Mr. Wright’s comments 
on this long-mooted and busy question of the ¢rue origin of 
the ‘Light Brahma”’ fowls. At the same time, in justice 
to our correspondent, Mr. G@. P. Burnham, we are con- 
strained to state that this theory of Mr. Wright, as we under- 
stand it, is based upon the statements made originally in 1852 
by Mr. Virgil Cornish, of Connecticut; and it is but fair now 
to quote the Cornish letter also, to show exactly what basis Mr. 
Wright has for his remarks above quoted by ‘‘F. R. W.,” and 
our readers can judge whether the Wright theory is sustained 
simply by this communication, adding, by the way, that its 
date, ‘“‘ March 2d, 1852,’’ was some three years subsequent to 
the date of Dr. W..C. Kerr’s letter to Mr. Burnham from 
Philadelphia, Pa., September 3d, 1849, when he (Dr. Kerr) 
sent to Mr. Burnham the first pair of gray fowls which Mr. 
B. bred in Massachusetts, and which he claims were the 
original birds whence came the Gray Shanghais he bred so 
successfully for years afterwards, which Dr. Bennett acknowl- 
edges he bought of Burnham in 1850 or 1851, and to the 
progeny of which, upon exhibition at Boston (at the same 
show where the Cornish-Hatch-Chamberlin fowls were 
exhibited), Dr. Bennett first publicly gave the name of 
‘Brahma Pootras,’”’ afterwards abbreviated, by common 
consent, to ‘‘ Brahma.” 
Mr. Cornish thus writes (and this letter was first published 
in 1853, some months after Mr. Burnham’s fine fowls reached 
the Queen of England, under the name of ‘ Gray Shang- 
hais,’’ be it remembered). At that time Dr. Bennett in- 
formed Dr. Wm. Custe Gwynne, of England, that his fowls 
and Mr. Burnham’s fowls sent to England ‘ were identical, 
precisely similar, and were bred from the same stock.” All 
this is upon the record. Mr. Cornish says, at Hartford, 
Conn., March 2d, 1852: 
‘‘No doubt you are acquainted with the relative position 
of the State in India called Chittagong, and the river called 
Brahma-Pootra. Chittagong is a small State upon the 
eastern borders, and bounding west upon the Bay of Bengal. 
The river Brahma-Pootra discharges its waters into that bay 
forty or fifty miles from the western bank of Chittagong. 
If the large, light-colored fowls came from that region—the 
Brahma-Pootra—of which I think there is no doubt, .... 
still lam unable to say by which name they should be called. 
Chittagong, if I understand it, is mountainous, while the 
country through which the Brahma-Pootra river runs is a 
flat country, exceedingly rich. ‘The richer the country the 
larger the production, is our rule to go by... . . In regard 
to the history of these fowls very little is known. A mechanic 
by the name of Chamberlin, im this city, first brought them 
here. Mr. Chamberlin was acquainted with a sailor, who 
informed him that there were three pairs of large, imported 
fowls in New York. Mr. Chamberlin furnished this sailor 
with money, and told him to go to New York and purchase 
a pair for him, which he did, at great expense. The sailor 
revorted that he fownd one pair of light gray ones, which he 
purchased. The man in New York, whose name I have not 
got, gave no account of their origin, except that they had 
been brought there by some sailors im the India ships. The 
parties through whose hands the fowls came, as far back as 
I have been able to trace them, are all obscure men. I 
obtained my stock from the original pair brought here by 
Mr. Chamberlin. These fowls were named ‘ Chittagongs ”’ 
