John Skinner
University of Wisconsin - Madison - USA

29-9-1985

Dear John,

I thank you for your letter of September 18th. I’m pleased you received the Supplement  and your comments are most encouraging, I can assure you. Many thanks for giving me mileage in the historical society newsletter.

Over the years that I have been doing this research I had hoped it would prove to have some value. Being so scattered made the going difficult. It needed to be collected somehow to make up the picture. I’m sure then is still a lot of material around that still needs to be found. One thing leads to another. For instance your information regarding Dr Bitgood and the blood groupings of chickens. I was not aware of this. I will be looking forward to reading his references. I knew it had been done with humans as Heyerdahl mentioned taking blood samples in Aku Aku, his story of the expedition to Easter Island in an endeavour to determine antecedents of the population.

In the Gallus species, which I hope to have out within the next few months, I deal with the osteological aspects of the chicken. Not that I have any qualifications in this area, but I lean on C.A.Finsterbusch Cockfighting all over the world to make the point - the difference between the Bankiva and the Malay - in bone structure. I will send you a copy when I print it.

Professor Solheim of the Department of Anthropology University of Hawaii has invited me to write an article for Asian Perspectives, journal of archaeology and prehistory of Asia and Pacific, published by the University of Hawaii as the general nature of my research covering that area. I only hope I don’t run out of time to get all this material I haven’t still sorted out but I am working on it.

Fine on your White Cochin Bantam. As I think you know my son and I have been breeding Pekin Bantams the counterpart of your Cochin in Australia for close an 20 years. We have done very little the last 2 years but are back into them this year. David lives a couple of miles away from me and has the Blacks, Whites and Blues. I have the Cuckoos, Brown Reds here and hatch the chickens. We have some early chicks this year and at the moment they are doing pretty well. Spring is in the air. Would not fancy battening down for your Wisconsin counties. Fortunately we don’t have snow here.

Hope your retirement goes well. Guess you will have plenty to keep you busy. Am enclosing photos from our Pekin Club Newsletter  and some of the 1984 Animal Shows birds which you may find of interest.