Fig. 57. Bantams make good pets
As has been stated, people who do not understand the close relations of the different races of fowls, and do not know how quickly new types may be established by careful breeding, attach a great deal of importance to purity of breed. Hence, unscrupulous promoters of new breeds have often claimed that they received their original stock direct from some remote place or from some one who had long bred it pure. The idea of assigning the town of Bantam as the home of a true species of dwarf domestic fowl seems to have occurred to some one in England more than a hundred years ago, and to have been suggested because of the resemblance of the name of this Asiatic city to the English word "banty," the popular name for a dwarf fowl. It seems strange that such a fiction should be accepted as accounting for dwarf varieties of European races, but it was published by some of the early writers, used by lexicographers, and, having found a place in the dictionaries, was accepted as authoritative by the majority of later writers on poultry, even after some of the highest authorities had shown conclusively that this view of the origin of dwarf races was erroneous.
Fig. 58. Black-Tailed White Japanese Bantams. (Photograph from Frederick W. Otte, Peekskill, New York)
Fig. 59. White Polish Bantam hen