Mr. Wright, who has traced these fowls back still further, inclines to
the belief that at some period whereof we have no knowledge the Penciled
varieties formed a part of the Hamburg family, although our earliest
positive knowledge traces them to direct importations from Holland,
where they were brought in great numbers, and were originally known
under the names of “Dutch Everyday Layers” or “Dutch Everlasting
Layers.”
As such a thing as a black or spangled variety of this fowl was utterly
unknown in Holland, it is presumable that at some period the penciled
varieties were exported to Holland and there bred and cherished, while
they were allowed to run out or sink into insignificance in England. We
cling to this belief so tenaciously on account of the wonderful
similitude which marks the characteristics of the Hamburg family, in
spite of the fact that one branch came from Holland and the other is
emphatically English. These two branches, namely, the Penciled and the
Spangles and Blacks, resemble no other varieties of fowls in the
slightest degree, while their common characteristics are the absence of
the incubating instinct, clean, slender legs, neat rose combs, small,
round and white ear-lobes, and the light, but sweeping and graceful,
lines of form which are wholly their own and unapproachable by any other
breed of fowls, no matter how fine their symmetry. If this were not
enough to stamp them with certainty of having one origin, we mark the
fact that spangled chickens are frequently _penciled_ in their first
feathers; while, as they mature, the black spangles or moons are often
surmounted by a light tip beyond them, thus again approaching the
penciled character, while conversely it will be found that if penciled
birds be bred too dark the last bar has a strong tendency to become _too
wide_, thus approaching a _spangled_ character.
If we consider the utter want of interest with which poultry was
regarded in the earlier days, and the fact that no traditions of any
account relating to fowls have been handed down, we may be justified in
believing that these facts prove our conjectures in regard to the
original identity of these varieties to be correct. From whence their
common progenitor came, we can have no idea, but that they did have one
we strongly believe. It may have been that they came from the Blacks, as
that variety is thought to be the oldest, and a cross might have
resulted in the broken color, or possibly these Blacks having a number
of white feathers may have been bred together until a distinctly-marked
plumage had been obtained.
Bearing in mind, however, that Aldrovandus speaks of a fowl which
strongly resembles the penciled variety as _Gallina Turcica_, it is
possible that the Penciled was the original variety, and, as the name
suggests, of Eastern origin.
These conjectures and hypotheses are perplexing and unsatisfactory, and
are really of no practical value, being only of use in affording another
instance of the fascinating problems which constantly present themselves
to the poultry fancier of a philosophical and inquiring turn of mind.
This much appears to be certain: that of all our many varieties of fancy
fowls the Hamburg is by odds the oldest; indeed, Mr. Wingfield claims
that old records show that fowls with all the Hamburg characteristics
were bred in the yards of monasteries as early as the fourteenth
century.
At the great Birmingham show the authorities there, recognizing the
general resemblance between the Penciled, Spangled and Black varieties,
and the inconvenience of their numerous and varied appellations, grouped
them together under the general name of HAMBURGS, by which they have
been known since, fanciers accepting with alacrity a name which was at
once convenient in classing the breeds and which brought the separated
members of what was no doubt a distinct family together, as it is most
certain they belong and should be arranged.
Many breeders who have no knowledge of the deliberations at Birmingham
have been puzzled to guess why the name Hamburg should have been chosen
to designate a family which was mainly English, but these “fathers of
the fraternity” had too much business to transact to allow them to
inquire very carefully into the early history of this fowl. The Rev. E.
S. Dixon proposed “that as the penciled varieties were then imported by
the Levant merchants from the port of Hamburg they should all take the
general name of Hamburgs,” and, indeed, this term is as euphonious and
convenient as any other could be.