Vol. I. PHILADELPHIA, JULY 16, 1874. No. 29. 
S. J. BESTOR vs. CONNECTICUT POULTRY 
NOTES. 
Jos. M. Wade, Esq., Editor Fanciers’ Journal. 
My Dear Sir: In the matter of the new standard, &c., 
allow me to state that I feel quite certain that the majority 
of the members of the Connecticut State Poultry Society 
have not approved, and will not approve, of the newly re- 
vised work ; and that an erroneous impression has been 
conveyed to your readers by the author of an article in the 
Journal of June 4th, under heading of “ Connecticut Poul- 
try Notes.” Said correspondent would have the fraternity 
believe that the Quarterly Meeting of the Connecticut State 
Poultry Society, at Hartford, May 12th, was “largely at- 
tended,” and that the resolutions of the American Poultry 
Association, &e., were carried by a large vote. The cor- 
respondent aforesaid also informs your readers that the 
resolution “ was opposed b) T only one speaker and two or 
three votes.” In the latter statement he was a truthful 
James. I am informed by the secretary of our society that 
our total membership exceeds one hundred and fifty persons. 
When the resolution was passed there were present — in- 
clusive of the President — fourteen persons ; no more and no 
less. Three, including two of the officers of the society, 
voted against the resolution as unnecessary or premature, 
and ten , and no more, voted in favor of the resolution, or 
else voted not at all. My impression is that some of the 
ten did not vote at all, although out of this “ large ” atten- 
dance of fourteen I concede there was a majority in favor of 
the resolution. I lay claim to no particular merit in being 
the “only one speaker opposing,” while, at the same time, 
my views are pretty well understood in the premises. I 
wish, however, the society of which I have been, since its 
first organization, an active member, or officer in some ca- 
pacity, to be rightly quoted or not at all. We are a wide- 
awake, progressive Poultry Society, and not without some 
reputation in the estimation of the fraternity at large, and 
I should feel sorry if we were as a body to be misquoted. 
I notice in your issue of July 2d that Mr. Halsted states 
that “ the Connecticut State Poultry Society has formally 
recognized the work of the Convention, &c. ; ” doubtless so 
reasoning, from the perusal of the communication before 
referred to, viz., “Connecticut Poultry Notes.” I, how- 
ever, make this prophecy, that our society never will use the 
latest version of the standard, without corrections being first 
made, and I don’t think any of our best judges in its mem- 
bership (and, by the way, we have not a few good judges in 
our membership) will ever make awards with the instruc- 
tions to judges which preface the newly-fledged standard 
work as their guide and authority. Certainly I never 
would, and I believe I am honored with as many invitations 
yearly from our State organizations as the average fancier. 
No intelligent, independent judge would or could do it; at 
least so it seems to me. 
So much by way of a minority report, if it may be so 
termed, as against the “ unanimous ” (?) nine or ten ma- 
jority, vide “Connecticut Poultry Notes.” Again: Now, 
for one, I concede to the respectability, intelligence, and 
high-rnindedness of the gentlemen of the Buffalo Conven- 
tion, many of whom have been, and I trust are now, my 
warm personal friends, and several have been for years my 
almost constant correspondents, patrons, and associates in 
Ihe poultry fancy. Many of them have been my personal 
guests, and I theirs, in years agone, but still I have dared 
to differ with them about this standard business, and I shall 
not cease the use of my pen, or the discussion of the errors 
and omissions in the standard, or any criticisms of my 
friends active in the Convention, or the society of which I 
am a member, or the American Poultry Association, until 
we get a little more of an improvement on the old standard 
than the one which had birth at Buffalo, A.D. 1874. I do 
not suppose that all of wisdom in Chickenology will perish 
at my decease, neither am I a prophet or the son of a pro- 
phet, but I arrogate this much to myself in reminding 
many of the gentlemen who took part in the proceedings of 
the Buffalo Convention, that when they were present at the 
Exhibition of the Connecticut State Poultry Soeiety, in 
December last, I stated that the revision of the standard 
would take months of consideration and careful labor, that it 
was no time to do it in the excitement of a poultry exhibition, 
and although preliminary steps might then and there be 
taken, the conclusion of the work should be deferred for six 
months or a year, or we should make bad work of it. I 
thought the experience I had had, and the work done by 
myself in the preparation of the old standard during the 
meetings in New York, Eebruary and May, 1871, had given 
me sufficient knowledge of the labor and difficulties in the 
way to say that much, and certainly no man saw at 
an earlier hour, than did your present correspondent, what 
fools we had made of ourselves there, or was more willing 
to eat humble pie in immediate atonement therefor. With 
such an experience before me, therefore I urged our soeiety 
and its delegates to take time to do this third revision well 
and thoroughly. 
I made and offered, at a special meeting of our State 
Society, the resolution appointing delegates to the American 
Poultry Association’s Convention at Buffalo; and had our 
delegates acted up to instructions I doubt not the American 
Poultry Association would have cheerfully deferred to a 
request for further time, and had the time been granted, 
many of the errors into which the Association has fallen 
might have been discovered in time to have avoided or 
remedied them, instead of leaving the work in confusion 
worse confounded, as now. 
The resolution I then offered was in import this: — That 
three delegates be appointed by the Connecticut State Poul- 
try Society to represent it at the Convention of the American 
Poultry Association at its contemplated meeting at Buffalo, 
but not to bind the society, by their votes, to a revision of 
the standard, without first submitting the business to the 
