CHAPTER XIV.
"BOTHER'EM POOTRUMS." BUBBLE NUMBER TWO.
There was something tangible, and real, in the "Cochin-China" fowl,—something that could be seen and realized (precious little, to be sure!), but still there was something. The Cochin-China hens would lay eggs (occasionally), and when they didn't breed their chickens with feathers upon the legs, they came without them. If the legs were not black or green skinned, they were either yellow or some other color. Their plumage was either spotted and speckled, or it wasn't. And thus the true article, the pure-bred Cochins, could always be designated and identified,—by the knowing ones,—I presume. I studied them pretty carefully, however, for five years; but I never knew what a "Cochin-China" fowl really was, yet!
But when, in 1850 and '51, the "Bother'ems" begun to be brought into notice, I saw at once that, although this was bubble number two, it ought to have been number one, decidedly.
Never was a grosser hum promulgated than this was, from beginning to end, even in the notorious hum of the hen-trade. There was absolutely nothing whatever in it, about it, or connected with it, that possessed the first shade of substance to recommend it, saving its name. And this could not have saved it, but from the fact that nobody (not even the originator of the unpronounceable cognomen himself) was ever able to write or spell it twice in the same manner.
The variety of fowl itself was the Grey Chittagong, to which allusion has already been made, and the first samples of which I obtained from "Asa Rugg" (Dr. Kerr), of Philadelphia, in 1850. Of this no one now entertains a doubt. They were the identical fowl, all over,—size, plumage and characteristics.
But my friend the Doctor wanted to put forth something that would take better than his "Plymouth Rocks;" and so he consulted me as to a name for a brace of grey fowls I saw in his yard. I always objected to the multiplying of titles; but he insisted, and finally entered them at our Fitchburg Dépôt Show as "Burrampooters," all the way from India.
These three fowls were bred from Asa Rugg's Grey Chittagong cock, with a yellow Shanghae hen, in Plymouth, Mass. They were an evident cross, all three of them having a top-knot! But, n'importe. They were then "Burrampooters."
Subsequently, these fowls came to be called "Buram-pootras," "Burram Putras," "Brama-pooters," "Brahmas," "Brama Puters," "Brama Poutras," and at last "Brahma Pootras." In the mean time, they were advertised to be exhibited at various fairs in different parts of the country under the above changes of title, varied in certain instances as follows: "Burma Porters," "Bahama Paduas," "Bohemia Prudas," "Bahama Pudras." And, for these three last named, prizes were actually offered at a Maryland fair, in 1851!