FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
693 
neration. The company effected a mortgage for that amount 
upon their rolling-stock and plant, and paid him. The infor- 
mation was then forthcoming. It was simple, but effective. 
The proprietors were to keep the head of the hen immersed 
for five minutes in a swill-tub, no more and no less ; and the 
bird fancier guaranteed that if the hen was afterwards placed 
upon the eggs, nothing short of main force or an earthquake 
could dislodge her. The most highly flavored swill-tub that 
could be found was obtained for the purpose. The hen’s 
head was immersed in the contents. One partner looked on 
with a borrowed watch in his hand, while his companion 
held the hen by the tail. When exactly five minutes had 
elapsed, in tones of great excitement the timekeeper ex- 
claimed, Time’s up. The hen after the operation would 
have sat anywhere. But there was wickedness amongst the 
members of the company. The language became very forcible 
indeed. The more pious of the two swore on the pardonable 
irritation of the moment. The two shareholders saw their 
subscribed capital disappearing. In a savage mood they 
rushed off to their consulting engineer, vowing vengeance 
upon him. That worthy saw them coming, guessed their 
fell purpose, and grasped a big carving knife to entertain 
them with, the sight of which had a calming influence upon 
the two infuriated shareholders. He coolly told them ‘to 
hold their din ’ and say nothing about it, or it might injure 
the company. He also promised to say nothing himself if 
they would pay for a pint of ale for him. They saw the 
wisdom of this advice, and paid for a pint accordingly. 
Somehow the facts became known, somebody proved false, 
a panic set in, the shares became at a discount, the company 
collapsed, tie original capital was lost, and as with too many 
bubble companies, nothing was left for the mortgagees but 
some addled eggs glued together. The moral is left for the 
judicious reader to discover .” — English paper. 
(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
MR. BURNHAM TO MR. WRIGHT. 
In the Fancier’s Journal of September 10 — nettled, I sup- 
pose, by the two paragraphs I quoted, in No. 2 of these letters, 
from his “private” epistle to me — he not only gives me 
leave to publish it, but challenges me to do so, saying that 
I “ dare not!” He again insults me, as he has of late so 
frequently and grossly done, by hinting not obscurely that, 
if I publish Tt, I shall not do so correctly ! I have nothing 
to say to this sort of thing but that the following is the whole 
letter, and nothing but the letter, exactly as written to me. 
I am a little surprised at the challenge; but of course Mr. 
Burnham is unable to see that such expressions, published 
as addressed by him to me, cannot possibly do me any harm, 
while they may do the writer a great deal. That, however, 
is his affair ; and here it is, verbatim : — 
Melrose, Mass., June 11, 1874. 
My Dear Sir: When I wrote you, some weeks ago— a 
reply to which note is just to hand, dated London, May 23d 
— I had never seen a copy either of your “ Brahma Fowl,” 
or your later “ Illustrated Poultry Book.” You will do me 
the justice to believe this statement, to-day, I am sure — upon 
reference to the tone of my first letter to you. I had heard 
that Mr. Wright had criticised me sharply, and I had heard 
something about his theory of the Brahma origin ; but I had 
never seen your books; and subsequently to writing you, I 
sent the money to Wade, of Philadelphia, to order a copy 
of your first work for me, from London, which I have not 
yet received ; though I borrowed your two works, a few 
weeks ago, from a friend, when I first learned of the strange, 
unfounded abuse you had piled up against me and my fowls 
in those two volumes. How you could have been so abom- 
inably cheated, and by whom , I cannot imagine. When 
that villainous assault came out (in Wade’s paper, Phil.), 
recently, I could no longer remain silent ; and I have taken 
measures effectually to deny and refute all your glaring- 
errors, as you will see , both in England and America, very 
shortly. 
I am sorry you allowed yourself thus to be “ sold,” “head, 
body, and boots,” by some one here who was inimical to me, 
evidently, and thus ridieuously, when I never was in the 
remotest way implicated or concerned in any manner, save 
by you , in the Cornish, Chamberlin, Bennet, Hatch, tom- 
noddy nonsense ; except that I did for years and years, 
burlesque and ridicule their deception, or (as one American 
editor characterizes it last month) this “ Cornish’s and Ben- 
nett’s infernal cheatery and nonsense, with which Wright 
has been so lamentably fooled 1 ” To which, upon reading 
your assaults upon me, for the first time, I solemnly assure 
you, within the last forty days, 1 now add that you or your 
informants, have not the slightest foundation upon which 
you can stand, from first to last ! 
I repeat it, I was utterly ignorant of virulence, the total 
falsity , the bitter misrepresentations, the carping, silly, un- 
warrantable language you had adopted towards me in your 
two books, until within the last few weeks — when I for the 
first time had access to those ignorantly-composed and mis- 
erably spirited volumes ! Wherein have 1 ever offended you , 
that you should thus in your books blackguard, malign, 
villi fy, and prate like “a hen with a sore head” about 
"■Burnham” this and “ Burnham ” that? 1 am a gentle- 
man, sir, by nature, education, fortune, never did a human 
being wrong, so help me God, to my knowledge, in my life. 
I wrote the “History of the Hen Fever,” true; and I stated 
truth in that volume, which you say “ was never received 
in America or England but with a laugh.” Its title, as you 
know, is “A Humorous Record.” It was purposely in- 
tended to be “ laughed ” at. And it accomplished this to the 
full , as I have good reasons to know. But when you , 3,000 
miles away, undertake to commingle and involve me in this 
cursed, obnoxious, Burram-pooter, Brahma-poutra, Burmah- 
porter, Bahama- poodra, sailor, Cornish, Chamberlin, Ben- 
nett, Hatch, Wright, Plaisted, “Knox” balderdash; when 
you must have been aware that all my life I have fought it 
steadily , and lampooned it everywhere, publicly and private- 
ly, as one of the chief of humbugs of the chicken-trade, I 
protest. And when you ought to have known that I never 
pretended my stock sent to the Queen of England, and others, 
was other than the China (not “ India ”) fowl, which I inva- 
riably contended, in all the years before your libellous books 
were written, were veritably “ Gray Shanghais,” light and 
dark, it is high time, though your offence is tardily discovered 
by me, that I resent your gratuitous and false assumptions, 
and enter upon my defence, though it bring you to grief. 
You misquote me, you interpolate your extracts from others, 
you put terms and phrases and sentences into my mouth in 
your book, and into others’ mouths, that we never wrote, or 
uttered, or contemplated. Thus you falsify, and garble, and 
misrepresent us all — for what? Simply to sustain your own 
sophistry and assumed theory, which is utterly baseless, as 
well as detestable. 
I enclose you my first article on the subject in America. 
Every poultry and fancier’s journal in this country, weekly 
and monthly, have opened their columns to me, as well as 
most of them in England. I shall avail myself of their 
courtesy, and shall endeavor , in my poor way, to answer and 
refute your infamous and spiteful tirade against me. Before 
1 get through I have no doubt I will succeed in impressing 
upon Mr. Lewis Wright, of England, if upon no one else, 
that that gentleman had much better have informed himself 
correctly of th e facts in this case ere he so maliciously and so 
stupidly ventured to assail and malign the undersigned. 
You have done me a grievous wrong , sir, either intention- 
ally or unwittingly. Am I mistaken in my judgment of 
Lewis Wright, as a man , when I now say to him personally 
(as I have publicly said in the enclosed printed article), “ I 
believe he is man enough to admit and atone for his errors ’’ 
regarding me and my stock, by publishing in his paper the 
within contribution over my signature, cut from the Phila- 
