All the Brahmas that have come under my notice, and I have made a point of seeing as many as possible, have been of either one or the other of the three following varieties, namely:-- 1. Grey Cochins. 2. Cross-bred Cochin and Dorking. 3. Cross-bred Cochin and Malay, or Chittagong. That the best of these birds are nothing more than grey Cochins, is proved by the fact that they have been frequently imported from Shanghae with the buff birds, ever since the latter have been introduced, and I know personally that the descendants of Grey Cochins, which were thus introduced into this country before the name of Brahma was ever heard of, have taken prizes as Brahma Pootras; the circumstance that those presented to the Royal Aviary were sent over from America as Grey Shanghaes would alone be sufficient to settle the question. As to the name which has been given to these birds, there is not one tittle of evidence to prove that they ever came from the region of the Brahma Pootra river, which, in the lower part of its course, is within one hundred and fifty miles of Calcutta, running through territory which has long been in the possession of the British; further from its mouth it flows through the country of Assam, to which some years since the East India Company sent two most observant naturalists to report on the natural history of the region, and had any such remarkable fowls existed it is scarcely credible that they could have escaped observation. A further and even more conclusive proof, if one were needed, may be found in their anatomical peculiarities; it is a fact, universally recognized by comparative anatomists, that the distinguishing characters of nearly allied animals are more strongly marked in the bones of the skull than in any other part of the body; if the skull of a Cochin be examined there will be found in the frontal bone, exactly under the base of the comb, a deep narrow groove running from before backwards, this remarkable structure is peculiar to these birds, being found in no other variety whatever, and is as strongly marked in the first named variety of so called Brahmas as in the Buff Cochins.