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Dr. Bennett, Mr. Cornish, or Mr. Anybody to thus mis- 
name my fowls. Everybody in England and America 
knew this; though my name was, by others, sometimes men- 
tioned in this connection; but, if Mr. Cornish, Dr. Bennett, 
or Mr. Wright; Dr. Gwynne, or Mr. Bailey; Mr. Teget- 
meier, or his Royal Highness Prince Albert, chose (as some 
did, I believe, after a while) to call my Gray Shanghais 
‘t Brahmas,’’ could I help it? I never called any of their 
fowls ‘‘Gray Shanghais,” surely. I'am not charged with 
this mistake at any rate, for Mr. Wright himself says (in 
iF. R. W.’s’’ quotation from him) that ‘‘ Burnham could 
not get that stock.”’ : 
How a sensible man who writes so cleverly as Wright 
does, usually, could have wrought himself up to penning 
such a tirade as he has, first and last against me on this 
always-hated ‘ Brahma’’ question, is more than I can 
comprehend—since it is notorious that I never had anything 
whatever to do with favoring it. I had then strenuously 
opposed it in committees; in my writings; in conventions; 
in public and private; first, last, and always; upon the 
ever-constant principle that my fowls were ‘‘ Gray Shang- 
hais’’ from the start, and not “ Brahma-Pootras.”’ 
I have often smiled at this talk and zeal on Mr. Wright’s 
part to ery me and my fowls down, and frequently I have 
been urged toreply tohim. I invariably used to do so, and 
have said a hundred times to friends: ‘‘ Why, bless you, Mr. 
Wright is all atsea in this matter! He is talking and writing 
about what does not concern me at all. He writes about the 
‘Brahma fowl,’ and of ‘Brahma-Pootras.’ What have I 
to do with ‘Brahma-Pootraism?’ I have no ‘ Brahma- 
Pootras;’ I never had; I never claimed to have had. My 
fowls are the ‘Gray Shanghais’—light and dark, my dear sir.”’ 
“True, But why dont you call your fowls ‘ Brahmas,’ 
as others do, Mr. Burnham?’’ ‘ Because I don’t choose 
to—I never did, and I’m too old to go back on myself. 
They are not Brahmas—that is, I mean my stock. I never 
said it was, and I never will.’’ 
These had steadily been my assertions ; still, Mr. Wright 
keeps calling me hard names, declaring that I ‘‘ never had 
any genuine Brahmas ”’ (who says I did ?), and that ‘ Burn- 
ham might have bred some tolerable imitation Brahmas” 
(which I did not). I had never even said I had any 
‘‘Brahmas’’ whatever, genuine or imitation; that I ever 
tried to breed ‘* Brahmas,’’ or pretended I did. I had 
never eyen called my fowls ‘‘ Brahmas,’”’ and never would ; 
and I surely made no statement, oral or written, in which 
Mr. Cornish’s fowls were involved, where I was a witness 
‘‘more’’ or ‘less reliable,’’? as Mr. Wright states, because 
his ‘¢ Chittagongs’’ or ‘¢ Brahma-Pootras,’’ or whatever he 
named them, never interfered with my ‘Gray Shanghaes’’ 
any more than did Dr. Bennett’s ‘‘ Wild East India Fawn- 
colored Dorkings,’’ at this same period notable. 
Mr. Wright adds that Burnham failed to purchase this 
Cornish stock, because he could not get it. Why not? I 
never tried to buy it. What did J want of it? I had the 
older stock, which I always deemed the dest, to wit: the 
Gray Shanghais. Mr. Wright lays great stress on the fact 
that ‘* Burnham vainly tried to purchase this stock, but did 
not succeed.’’? Admitted, again, that I did not. Thus, of 
course, Mr. Wright is a good witness that the fowls I had 
(presupposing that I ever had any) were not of this Cornish- 
Chamberlin, ‘‘ Chittagong” or ‘‘ Brahma-Pootra’’ strain. 
This settles one point clearly. 
But, I had better ones, and this it was that bothered my 

FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGH. 
competitors, as thousands testified in favor of my birds, all 
over the world, in those years. I raised over 1600 of the 
‘Gray Shanghais’”’ in one year (1852 to 1853) in Melrose, 
and sent them all over Great Britain and the United 
States, to my generous patrons entire satisfaction, but 
never once calling them by the detested name of Brahma- _ 
Pootras, about which Mr. Wright has so unkindly (toward 
me) raised such a silly fuss. 
All this, be it remembered, I now state as applying in point 
of time to the period when Mr. Wright got out his books. 
Of course, in the last few years (since this ‘‘ Brahma’’ name 
has been so universally in use), I have as often spoken of 
them as of my Gray Shanghais, because everybody latterly. 
thus designates this kind of poultry, for convenience. And 
in my ‘New Poultry Book,’ issued in 1871,,I advertised 
and wrote about them as ‘‘ Brahmas,’’ because we had all 
accepted this latest popularly established name—both in 
England and America—but not previousty, when Wright 
published his works. 
I am now sixty years of age. I solemnly declare that I 
never was concerned in making or in sustaining this name 
of ‘‘ Brahma” for fowls. I never claimed it for my stock; 
I had no occasion to do so. I never (in those years) sold 
any fowls thus, for I knew when and where this name was 
made—by another party, for his own purposes—and I knew 
that my stock were not ‘‘ Brahmas,’’ but true ‘‘ Gray Shang- 
hais.”” Under this latter name, only, I always sent them 
to England. If other people choose to call them ‘ Black 
Spanish,’’ I could not and cannot help it. 
And to sum up, briefly, I will now say to Mr. Wright, 
you have entirely misapprehended this whole ‘ Brahma”’ 
origin matter, so far as Jam concerned. You have assailed 
me and my fowls for no good reason under God’s heavens. 
I never had anything whatever to do with your “ Brahma ”’ 
fowls, about which you make such an ado! I never wished 
to; I never bred, bought, borrowed, kept, or had any 
‘ Brahmas,’’ during the first twenty years of the poultry 
mania, from 1848, forward. Mr. Cornish does not say a 
word about me; and that gentleman and myself have never 
had any variance whatever, either written or verbal. In 
his letter he does not talk of Mr. Burnham, or about “ Brah- 
mas.’’? He calls his fowls ‘‘ Chittagongs,’’ then as Dr. Kerr 
and Mr. Chamberlin did. Afterwards, they called them 
‘‘ Brahma-Pootras,”’ I believe, as they had the right to do, 
just as I had always called mine ‘‘ Gray Shanghais,’’ by the 
same right; as they (and Mr. Wright ought to) very well 
know. 
Dr. Bennett created this name of “ Brahma.”’ Surely, 
Mr. Lewis Wright, ‘‘thou can’st not say I did it,’’? and 
speak the truth! And, once for all, I now inform you that 
I had no share in this ‘‘ Brahma-Pootra’’ or ‘ Brahma” 
bubble, either as to fowls or by this name (except justly to 
ridicule it), from the beginning to the end; but constantly 
and always fought it ‘tooth and nail,’ as Cornish, Bennett, 
and everybody else knows; and simply claimed that I had 
and (bred, kept, and sold) presented to the Queen, and ex- 
hibited, only my choice ‘‘ Gray Shanghais,”’ the finest fowls 
in the world, which I imported from Shanghai, through 
Philadelphia (Dr. Kerr) and New York (W. T. Porter), in 
1849 and 1850. Will you correct these errors of yours, by 
publishing this article in your new London Fanciers’ Gazette ? 
I ask this at your hands as my just, legal, and moral right. 
You have the facts before you.s Will you, Mr. Lewis 
Wright, now accord me this simple justice ? 
