Mr Frank Gary
Crosswicks - N.J. - USA

21-2-1984

Dear Mr Gary,

Good to hear from you and my appreciation for your thoughts in sending me a numbered copy of the 6th edition of the Standard. I shall look forward to receiving it. I looked through my bookshelves and there are five editions there of the ABA Standard and now there will be a 6^th, 1969 - 1984, in just 15 years. You can be very proud of your efforts. It must be very satisfying. The other volume you speak of, Rare and Foreign Breeds of Bantams, sounds very interesting. Glad to hear the 6^th edition if selling well. The color illustrations sound interesting.

In reference to the Standard for the Pekin. We will eventually get to it, possibly perhaps with a few minor alterations. As I said the dissenter no longer comes to the meetings anyway. My son (who is Secretary of the Pekin Club) said only the other day that we should aim to form a Standards Committee within the Club and got things straightened out. When I put in my book that the tips of the feathers in the Mottles should be V shaped it stirred up a few out of their reverie. Reputedly the mottles were made in Australia from Anconas. This has been written and I repeated in my book also. The maker of the mottles has never denied that he used the Ancona, so why shouldn’t they be V shaped. How they were made in England I do not know. However my guess is that over there Belgian Bantam was used for I think some of the Belgians have white tips on the feathers. The British Std. for Mottles says just white tips.

OK on your comments on the APA Std.. They did pretty well out of it.

I had a letter from Professor Skinner. He is sending me a copy of the APA Std. and has asked me to review it in our Poultry journal out here in Australia. I will also do this with the ABA Std. If you could let me know the price of it and I guess it will be available from Fred Jeffrey a review may sell a few copies in Australia.

It’s a pity there were omissions etc. in the APA Std. but I guess when working to deadlines and lack of cooperation did make the going hard for Dr Skinner.

Glad to hear you were able to attend Columbus and thanks for the information on the show. It will make good copy for the next issue of the Pekin Club Newsletter.

Tell George he is going OK with the typing. Good to hear he is learning a bit about the chickens.

That’s quite OK about having an aversion to the tape recorder. No problem.

Have been doing some renovations to the house and have set myself up with an 8 foot bench, complete with drawing board and shelf to hold my current research material. Am fitting a Fluorescent light under the self to give me good light which I need because of my eyes. They are still OK but have to go back to the Doctor in March. May have to change glasses again before the eye clouds right over, however they are not too bad at the moment.

Hope your weather has improved. Has been pretty warm here with thunderstorms at night.

Another letter arrived from you since I wrote this so will reply to it separately.

Got the color standard for Black Red etc etc. through our last meeting. Will give you the details in the next letter. We are going to print it in the next Newsletter. As you have always said it is no use messing about with these things. Think we might have things moving at last. All for now.

Sincerely Yours,