The variety known under this name originated in Dorsetshire, England.
They are under the average size, rather slenderly made, of a soft and
pleasing bluish-dun color, the neck being darker, with high, single
combs, deeply serrated. The cock is of the same color as the hen, but
has, in addition, some handsome dark stripes in the long feathers of the
tail, and sometimes a few golden, or even scarlet marks, on the wings.
They are exceedingly impudent, familiar, and pugnacious.
The hens are good layers, wanting to sit after laying a moderate number
of eggs, and proving attentive and careful rearers of their own
chickens, but rather savage to those of other hens. The eggs are small
and short, tapering slightly at one end, and perfectly white. The
chickens, on first coming from the egg, sometimes bear a resemblance to
the gray and yellow catkin of the willow, being of a soft bluish gray,
mixed with a little yellow here and there.
Some class these birds among the game fowls, not recognizing them as a
distinct race, upon the ground that, as there are Blue Dun families
belonging to several breeds--the Spanish, the Polish, the Game, and the
Hamburghs, for example--it is more correct to refer each Blue Dun to its
own proper ancestry.