Mr Frank Gary
Crosswicks - N.J. - USA

15-10-1983

Dear Mr Gary,

You have perhaps wondered what had happened to me as it is quite some time since I last wrote. I have had quite a busy time one way or another. Assisting my son in his business interests has been one of the time takers and renovating my home another. The days don’t seem long enough to get through all the jobs.

Hope you and Mrs Gary have been keeping well. The cataract is continuing to grow over my left eye but the doctor says it is still too soon to do anything with it yet. He changed my glasses which was a great help. It was getting that way I was having difficulty reading the newspaper. At the moment it is OK. He says I will probably need another change of glasses before the cataract grows right over. I am using TIMOPTOL drops twice a day which is holding the pressure and he is quite pleased with that. I don’t have to see the Doctor again until December. Apart from little arthritis in a couple of fingers I appear to be quite OK.

I am at present working on setting up a colour standard on behalf of the Pekin Bantam Club of NSW for Color pattern for Black Red, Blue Red, Brown Red, Birchen, Pile etc for the Pekin Bantam. A few of these colors are starting to get about out here and some of our Club members from West Australia wrote and asked the Club to provide some guidelines in these colors.

As usual the British Standard isn’t a great deal of help, so I am working from the old time Game breeder A.J.Compton (you may remember my references to him in my book). In my opinion he was the greatest authority we have had in Australia together with Mark Marshall who more or less set out the Australian Pit Game Standard. Their writings have stood the test of time.

At the moment I have some eggs in the incubator of Black Reds and Brown Reds sent over from the West so we will see what they have come up with.

At our Annual Pekin Show this year there were some birds shown as Brown Reds but they were Crow wings, just a cross from Black and Buff. Not good enough.

I think in these colours we must stick to the Old English Game Colors, because after all they will have to be made from the OE. Would appreciate your opinion on this matter.

Had a visit the other day from the President of the newly formed Plymouth Rock Club. They have to think of some standardisation and the Plymouth Rock color situation is quite confused out here. They exhibit both Light and Dark  Barred. Anyway I loaned  him a couple of APA Standard and a ABA Standard and gave him the same advice that you some years ago and that was not to fiddle around and get too many involved. Just with his committee sum up the situation and get on with it.

I have begun work on my next book. It will cover the two Game breeds indigenous to Australia i.e. Australian Game and Australian Pit Game and will be entitled The Game Fowl of Australia. It involves quite a bit of work as I have to copy out the material from the old Poultry papers which I acquired dating back to 1922, it is really worthwhile information. It will more or less a history of the breeds or a collection of information on them. Then I want to do books on the Australorp and Langshan, then finally one on the origin, evolution, history and the diffusion of the domestic fowl. throughout the world. I have researched material for this latter subject for quite a number of years and have a good lot of it to sort out.

As I am 62 years of age now I will have liven myself up if I want to get all these things done.

My apologies for not writing sooner but will endeavour to do better in the future. All the best for now and how is your latest Standard coming along?

Sincerely yours,

P.S. If you are speaking to Fred Jeffrey would you mind telling him I will be writing soon.