Dr Elio Corti
Valenza - Italy

24-9-1994

Dear Elio,

I thank you for your interesting letter and cheque. I hope the other books don’t take too long to reach you. Please let me know when they arrive and any comment you may have.

Yes, I was happy to receive the recognition from Prof Crawford. It made me feel that my efforts over the years had not been wasted. I trust that my work may assist others who wish to pursue the subject. I do have a deal of further material which I did not publish. Perhaps I may make a copy of the material for you at some future date. Do you have a copy of my booklet on Gallus species - Jungle Fowl? I have the feeling that you do. Veronica had some of them for sale. You may have obtained one from her.

I am pleased you have received Clive Carefoot’s book. I am sure you will find both his and Jeffrey’s books most interesting for your study.

I received a letter from Fred Jeffrey a couple of weeks ago with some interesting information on my present research which I will write about later.

Glad you found some information on the Yokohama. I will search for some more.

Regarding the word Pile our English language is somewhat complicated at times. We spell this word PILE. The Americans PYLE. English word COLOURED is American COLORED. CENTRE is American CENTER. The Americans spell the word the way it is pronounced. We don’t always do it this way. Also many English words are spelt the same have different meanings and pronounced differently for example the word ROW can mean to ROW a boat or ROW pronounced differently means to make a noise. If you would like I could perhaps make a cassette tape explaining some of these things. I do not speak any other languages unfortunately except the Morse code which is involved with my amateur radio.

Speaking of this, fine on your cousin and friend of his being radio amateurs. I have spoken over the years to many amateurs in Italy as well as other countries all over the world. I am enclosing my card for cousin and will make a few notes on the back of it. They will understand the frequencies I operate on and will know the times when conditions are favourable for contact with Australia. At the moment we are at the bottom of sunspot cycle (11 year cycle) and conditions are not good. However within a couple of years things should improve. Perhaps we may talk with each other one of these days.

Your trip to the Netherlands sounds interesting. I am sure you and Eduardo will gain much informations. I used to correspond with Anna Banning Vogelpoel in the Netherlands. She was very knowledgeable and wrote on Japanese (Chabo) Bantams. I haven’t heard from Anna for some time. I hope she is OK.

Fine Eduardo being Brazilian. I guess the coloured eggs I believe are spread pretty much around South America. It seems to be the only stable trait involved with Araucana.

Much as been written on this breed, but as far as I can ascertain no one has come up with a positive answer to the origin of the Araucana. I have my theory as you would be aware from my booklets, but it is not necessarily the correct answer.

Nobody appears to have been able to get hold of what could be classed as a pure Araucana. Some have pea combs, some are rumpless, there is variation in the type of ear lobes, nothing remains stable. I have a lot of material that has been written on the breed. Still nothing definite as to how they originated.

However there is some interesting stuff amongst. One of our academics out here suggested they originated on Easter Island. When I questioned his theory he became quite upset. Heyerdahl advised me that when he first visited Easter Island and stayed there for some months, there was no sign of blue eggs on Easter. Perhaps one day I put a lot of this information together but I don’t think it would serve much purpose, I think it would upset some people.

The Fayoumi breed at the moment I do not know. I will go through my files and get in touch with my Japanese radio amateur friend. It sounds like Japanese name. It would appear that you have some friends in some European countries as perhaps you may be able to obtain some information for me.

I am presently investigating why we don’t get good distinct barring in breeds other than Plymouth Rock. I thought perhaps it may be the difference in slow and fast feathering. I wrote to Fred Jeffrey about this and he said he didn’t think it was as simple as this but told me that when he was in Cologne in 1980 he saw Barred Leghorn with every but as good a barring as in the Plymouth Rock. Could you find out perhaps whether these Leghorns are slow or fast feathering? I guess they would come from Germany or Holland.

I am enclosing a complementary copy of a small booklet on Old English Game colours. It might explain PILE. Pile, Duckwing, Blue Red, Black Red. Same pattern but colours different.

Please excuse writing. My eyesight is very poor. I am suffering from glaucoma and macular degeneration. I have had 2 cornea transplants on one eye and the other eye has never been much good. It slows down my activities to some extent. However I keep fairly good health otherwise I am 73 years old and hope to be around for awhile as I still have a lot of work to do yet.

Regards.