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FANCIERS JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 



doing what they would have done if placed in the same 
circumstances. 
In my next article I shall notice the work of the Conven- 
tion; but, as absence from home will prevent me from 
writing anything further for several weeks, or even reading 
what others may write, I will add a word or two with 
regard to Mr. Burnham’s criticism of the standard for 
Brahmas. 
Mr. B. endeavors to ridicule the idea of makihg a differ- 
ent standard for the two classes of fowls, and yet in another 
article he objects to a mere ‘ theoretical standard.” Now, 
the Convention believed that there is just this difference 
between the two varieties found in the flocks of the best 
breeders. Mr. B. has his theory that they ought to be alike. 
Perhaps they were in the old days of the ‘‘Hen Fever,” 
when certain parties practiced on the credulity of the 
public, and brought the business into disrepute, but they 
are not the same to-day, as Mr. B. will find if he will visit 
a few of the leading poultry shows where first-class birds 
are exhibited. With Mr. B.’s experience it is not necessary 
to inform him that fashion and type of fowls change, and 
very great changes are possible, and instead of making an 
arbitrary standard to suit. their own views, they conformed 
the standard to the actual facts of the case, as shown in the 
decisions of the best judges, and as seen in the fowls of the 
most prominent breeders. F. R. W. 
Jos. M. Wanpz, Esa. 
Dear Sir: I am tired of seeing so much of the valuable 
space taken up in your paper in the discussion of the old 
and new Standard of Excellence. I think they can discuss 
this question all summer, and then be just as far off as when 
they commenced.. There might be one made every week, 
and you would find some one that-is competent to pick out 
flaws in it; it isso in everything. JI have been in the mili- 
tary service the most of the time since I was fifteen years 
old (am now over forty), and we have had tactics from Scott, 
Hardee, Cameron, Casey, Upton’s first, and now Upton’s 
second, and military men could always find faults in them ; 
and it will be just the same if you get up another standard 
now. I donot propose to enter into this discussion, but I 
want to say something in regard to the Brahmas. Mr. 
Burnham thinks the standard ought to be the same for the 
Light and Dark. I think the new standard is nearer right, 
and I will tell you why: I have tried the Light and Dark 
Brahmas—Dark five years and Light about ten years. I 
think there is a difference between them besides the color. 
If Mr. Burnham breeds them now, he may have two strains 
that are alike as to shape, form, &c.—mine are not. I think 
the two differ very nearly as much as the Cochins and 
Brahmas do. Because they are both called Brahmas that is 
no reason, as I look at it, that they shall be the same form, 
shape, &c., any more than they should be the same color. 
Their combs, of course, are supposed to be pea, or the same. 
Now, Mr. Editor, I think the gentlemen who made up the 
new standard for the Brahma fowls knew what they were 
about. , 
One word about leg feathering. I have had about one 
hundred Dark Brahma chicks hatched out this year, and 
_ hearly every one of them have been feathered down the leg 
to the tips of outer toe, and on the outside of middle toe 
(when hatched). Now, this is natural. [ Yes, to the young 
ones; they do not always mature so.—ED. ] 

— 0 

I have had hatched out about fifty Light Brahmas this 
year, and nearly every one has been feathered down the leg 
to the tips of the outer toes, but no feathers on the middle 
toes. This, I think, is natural also; and this difference, I 
think, is the reason why the new standard is made as it is 
in regard to the leg. 
_If any one will look at the old standard and then at the 
new one on the Brahmas, they will see at once how much 
better the new one defines the Brahmas than the old one 
does. Take the head, for instance. The old one does not 
tell you anything about the make of it, while the new is so 
plain that any boy can understand it, and I think it is the 
making of the bird, and ought to count more than any 
other part. 
I think we had better let well enough alone for a while. 
If you get up another standard, you will have a division 
and two standards, and then we shall be worse off than we 
are now. Respectfully yours, W. M. W. 
PrEABopy, Mass., May 25, 1874. 






Poutry DepaRTMENT: 
(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
THE HISTORY OF THE HEN FEVER. 
A HUMOROUS RECORD. 
BY GEO. P. BURNHAM. 
PRINCE HENRY.—What! Fought you with them all? 
FaustTarr.—All?. I know not what ye call all. Butif I fought not 
with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish. 
P. Hen.—Pray heaven, you have not murdered some of them! 
Faus.—Nay, that’s past praying for. I have peppered two of them; 
two, Iam swre, I have paid. Two chaps in buckram suits, 
[Kine Henry IV, Act 2d. 
JosepH M. Waps, Esa. 
My Dear Sir: So many inquiries have latterly been 
made for copies of the above volume, written by me in 1855 
(which, as its title-page above quoted plainly indicated, was 
purely a burlesque of a humorous character), and which in 
the light of to-day I admit might as well never have been 
written at all—that once for all, I now ask room for a brief — 
paper on this book (long ago out of print), especially on 
account of the spunky article in your last number addressed 
to me, by a Mr. Athole, of New York. 
Poultry fanciers of the present time, Mr. Editor, are not 
all so thin-skinned as Mr. Athole appears to be. In the days 
when my above-named amusing ‘‘ History of the Hen Fever”’ 
was published, however, there were a good many just such 
‘fanciers ’’ about; and to show up them, their follies, and 
their humbuggery, this work was then printed. It was pen- 
ned in.a playful spirit of homely bandinage, only ; and, as is 
stated in its preface, ‘“‘ written in perfect good nature, with 
the design to gratify its readers, to offend no man living, 
