22 January 1980

Dear Mr Plant,

Received your letter of 10 January 1980. It is hard to understand why my letter of December 14 took such a large time to reach you, because your letters to me come through in two or three days from Australia; however this latest letter of yours has taken about ten days. I would suggest that if you are revising the Pekin Standard that you follow the rigid order which we follow in writing our descriptions. It is followed identically in order for each fowl. You will also note that in describing the color patterns we list each one of these body parts even though the color pattern in that part may be the same as another part This leaves no doubt in the mind, particularly in the mind of the beginner, as to what the proper color pattern should be.

I believe you are in the right track when you work with a small group to revise your Pekin Standard. This way you will make rapid headway. Do not worry about criticism from someone who says Those fellows are only making a Standard to suit their own birds. I can well remember after the 1st Edition of the ABA Standard was distributed that I met Dr David Wolf of Albany, Ga., at a meeting of the ABA in Atlanta, Ga., that he made a sarcastic remark to the effect I see that you have put the American Game Bantam in the front of the Standard which should be of great benefit to you.

The reason why the American Game was the first breed in this standard was because we have decided that all the breeds in our standard would be listed in strict alphabetical order as opposed to the APA who lists their birds in class order and having received many gripes about this from people using their standard that it was hard to find a particular breed that they were looking for.

When Mr Jeffrey prepared the 3rd edition he made the suggestion that all color description be placed separately in strict alphabetical order which was, to many people, considered a further improvement.

I do have hopes that our 5th Edition will include Australian varieties that do not appear in any other Standard. It may be that you can accomplish what you really want to do if we could pick up all Australian breeds including the Pekin that you are presently struggling with. I do not understand in what respects the Australian Pekin differs from our Cochin Bantam because I do not have enough material from you to search out the differences. I will be glad to include the Australian Pekin in our 5th Edition if you would like to have this done.

Of course, you realize that we must confine ourselves to Bantams even though it may be rare to find a Bantam counterpart to some of the larger breeds fowl, but the real purpose is to have a standard description available. For instance, the Altsteier Bantam which is a very old European breed with small likelihood that there are many bantams in this breed. The real reason that I picked up this breed was the counter the criticism of Dr Wolf and others which alphabetically preceded the American Game Bantam.

I might say that I have also already prepared and sent to Mr Jeffrey eight other rare breeds which will eventually, hopefully, appear in the 5^th Edition.

About ten years ago, I had cataracts removed from both eyes at two separate intervals. My vision was nearly perfect for about five years thereafter, but I made the serious mistake of not going back to the surgeon who performed the operations for a semi-annual check of my eyes. Rather suddenly, my vision began to be blurry, and, of course, I immediately contacted this doctor who criticized me severely for not coming in for semi-annual checkups. I really did not understand that I was supposed to have these subsequent checkups. He prescribed certain medical drops which at the time arrested any further deterioration which he labelled as glaucoma. About a year and one-half ago, I had a further deterioration and have been to seven other specialists to see if any help could be given. I would like to warn you to have an examination for glaucoma at least once each year. It takes only a few minutes and you do not even feel it. They pt drops in your eyes and immediately use a small meter instrument to measure the pressure.

Your research on Poultry is interesting. I am in possession of Moubray’s Treatise on domestic and ornamental poultry, new edition enlarged by L.A.Meal, dated 1854. This has several color plates and contains 504 pages and is probably worth in excess of 150$ today. As far as I can find out, color plates in any printing appeared for the first time in 1830’s. This book is about the oldest one that I possess, although I do have a copy of the reprint of Aldrovandi on chickens written a few centuries back. I would be of no real help in your research.

Sincerely,