26-1-1996

Dear Bill,

Big confusion with the mail. Your letter mailed December 18 arrived around 10 days ago, the letter you forgot arrived right after 9 days. I reply to these two letters and you don't reply too sooner, you must await for my reply to the last letter you are writing or mailing.

The scientific name of Shingles is Herpes zoster, i.e. approximately, snake (serpent = serpes = herpes - i.e. wandering) & belt  (zona in Greek). In Italy it's also called Fuoco di Sant'Antonio, St. Anthony Fire, because St. Anthony the Abbot, born in 250-252 in Egypt, suffered of this illness. The illness becomes from the reactivation of a herpes virus, the same of the varicella of the boys (chickenpox), and this virus may stay quiet years and years in the sensitive nervous spinal cells. One day this virus, irritating the cells, gives pain and eruption in the skin by a reflex way, because the virus is not in the skin, but in the nervous sensitive ganglia. Good that now you are better. I can tell to you that you are again young and in good health, because the old people and the emaciated people don't have pain, or only few pain. Small but important consolation!!!

Don't worry about the cover of your correspondence book. You prepare the sketches of the fowls, and for the title no problems. We will have time to discuss and to try with graphics.

Travel Agent. I have informed my travel agent about the price and it seems too much expensive. When he will have the new prices of the season, cheaper I think, it's possible to send you the ticket pre-paid in Italy, assurance enclosed. But, no problems, will resolve this point. You must only prepare yourself in writing to Carefoot (done), Veronica, British Museum (Barbara West, if possible), and I suggest also Annie Banning Vogelpoel, because think that we go around on the Continent by car, and the Netherlands is in my plains. Try to obtain from Annie when she is available, so we may program our trip.

A little suggestion. You will be guest of the Entente Européenne  in Bergamo where they are present all the Presidents of the European Breeders. I hope to have something from Brazil to give as remembrance from South America and Fighting Cocks Clubs. In the same period when you are in Valenza, will be present also the mother of Jeffrei, the half-nephew of Eduardo. She will bring from Brazil something for these Presidents. To you the choice of this little thing from Australia. I think that the Presidents will be around 15-20.

Don't forget the sketches, the last correspondence, the biographies. Later I will send a list of some letter which is unreadable or lacking of little part. So, you can photocopy what is missing. I hope you will receive soon a reply from China as suggested by Rich. This is very important, because your line is to demonstrate that the Malay is becoming not from Bankiva.

For assistance from the Government I think that they are all useless words. The Government looks only where is possible to gain money. And our fowls are not money. They are only for crazy people.

Received the photocopies of Somes' book. Thank you very much, even for other enclosed things (Aboriginal culture and the article of Jerome Pratt). This material of Pratt may stay at your home, because put it in your book directly. I need only of your reply to Pratt.

My compliments for your Newsletter. I can tell you that the person working on it, the pagemaker, works very well. Who is this fellow?

I read in the last page that you have 3 months of holidays in Italy. Yes, I prefer 3 months!!! Two months are too much few. Let me know, as sooner as possible, if it's a mistake or if your ticket will be for 3 months. Very interesting the article of David about brown-red Pekin. I await for the prosecution. In one letter you told me about the problem of the toes in leg feathered fowls. I have found the references of material you have:

Carefoot: at page 88  - Crawford: page 227 - Brachydactily (By)

I think that you can resolve all your doubts. In separate envelope I send an article written for the Dutch friends of the Club of Belgian Bearded. You can find your name inside.

Sorry, but the article I wrote for my Association about my stay with you in Australia is in Italian language. If David find somebody who is able to read and translate contemporaneously, I  think that it may be an interesting article.

About the ex libris I will prepare and cut for you. I have a  master copy of 16 ex libris  per page. And it's difficult for you to  cut them. They are enclosed in the other envelope.

Now I quote the problem I'm mailing to Hoffmann. This is an interesting problem, similar to that of Atahualpa.

Now, a little problem about which I desire your ideas. I think that you are competent not only in Muscovy duck (as your superlative job demonstrates) but even in other problems regarding animals as turkey. In this moment it's open a bridge Valenza-Paris-Lisboa about the etymology of the word peru as is called the turkey in Portuguese, only  by this word, and the female is perua. My thesis would demonstrate  that the Portugueses called the turkey Ave do Peru, may be in  contraposition of the Spaniards, who called it Pavo. My thesis arises from the affirmation reported in Crawford's book: Schorger (1966)  states that they (turkeys) were present in Peru before arrival of the  Spanish and may have be taken there from Nicaragua.

Do you agree with Schorger? I don't know his works, and I think  that it's a little difficult for me to find them. I am also studying the  history of the Amazonas conquest by the Portugueses. They were in  Peru, in Quito, now Ecuador, in 1637, when Teixeira overstepped the Tordesilla's line. The presence of the word peru in India, in Dravidian language, is too much easy: Goa was Portuguese. Interesting also the true possibility of the arrival of the turkeys via Asia. As you can read in Latin (from the ancient book I have, printed in Pavia, Ticinum in  Latin, because of the river), the turkey was called Gallos indicos, seu calecutenses. Calecutenses not from Calcutta in Bangladesh, but from Calicut (today also called Kozhicode - 420,000 inh.), near Goa, Kerala State. If you agree with Schorger, then peru for turkey becomes  from Peru. It would be easier for the Portugueses to call the turkey  Mexican bird, Spanish bird. They called it peru. Each nation called  the birds in different ways: Numida meleagris is Guinea fowl in English, Galinha d'Angola  in Portuguese, Faraona (note the abbreviation, right is Gallina del Faraone ) in Italian. And Faraona, is not the wife of the Pharaoh, but it's implied the word Gallina del Hen of the etc.

The same is for peru, which was Ave do Peru. But, when the  turkey was called peru ? Because I think that the Portugueses knew  this bird the first time in Europe, when Colombo or others took it in Spain. Why the Portugueses preferred peru ! In the beginning of 1500 they don't was in Peru, but only in 1637.

Note the big confusion about the birds' names in 1779: Gallos indicos......alii ex Numidia primum venisse volunt: others tell that the first time these cocks came from Numidia. But, Numidia is the land of Guinea fowl !

Right is this German Archiatra of the King of England, Georg Gottlob, when he tells about India: quos ex India (seu novo orbe) i.e. or from the New World. This annotation and specification is a clear contraposition to calecutenses, because Calicut is in India, the old India, the true India. The German Welscher Hahn is most generic, because it means Foreign fowl. This welscher  may becoming from anywhere.

Yesterday, when I was in Pavia, 58 km from Valenza, to enter in the first touch with the Editor, I found a very interesting thing: in Lithuania the turkey is called Kalakùtas. Obviously, from Calicut. The Professor who gave me the information told also that the Lithuanian language is an old interesting language, i.e. Indo-European of Baltic group.

Do you think that I must enter in touch with Charmion McKusick, or Schorger? If yes, do you have their addresses?

The editor told me that my book will be divided in 3 books, 350 pages each. I think that the previous title I said you, Summa Gallicana would be the right title.

Dear Bill, I enclose also the photocopy of this interesting old book, telling about birds as medicaments.

I am writing to Prof Carter to obtain unpublished material about precolumbian chickens in the Americas, as suggested by Edmund.

I am awaiting for your last letter. Don't reply to this. I embrace you.

The Dutch Friends

1-1-1996

I prefer open this article, kindly requested by the President Hans Heemskerk, in saying that I am very pleased and honoured in writing to the Netherlands’ Friends. But, I would like remember together with you the first time I was in your land, in 1981, when, with my late wife, I visited nearly the whole your country, and I was astonished in looking what a people was able to realise in fighting, better than a fighting cock, against the natural adversities represented by the water and by the sea. What I can tell in front of the Afsluitdijk? I have a pocket-altimeter I used when, younger, I was walking in our Alps, and I brought it to the Netherlands to measure if truly there was an area laying below the sea level. Yes, it was true. I visited your big and small enchanting towns, and in the zoological Gardens in Alphen I had the first contact with the love you demonstrate towards the animals, but in that period of my life I was unaware of hoenders, and only ten years later I began in knowing the various breeds, their beauty, and finally the great competence of the Dutch breeders.

Here, in Italy, the breeders are fundamentally divided into two factions: the admirers of the Germany, and the admirers of the Netherlands. I can put myself in the second category, and I have my good motivations.

An example: never I saw Andalusians better than I find in Zuidlaren show, edition 1994. A perfect lacing, present also in the legs. Another example: my Federal President, Maurizio Tona, told me that an Italian fancier, owner of a group of Bearded d’Anvers Quail arising from your Association’s Breeders, had the luck to breed a very nice female, and that never he saw a similar female.

I think that it’s almost useless to continue in telling about the high quality of the animals you breed. I would like search with you the reasons of this. I know that in the Netherlands you are able in breeding animals very hard to bring up, for example, the Gouldian Finch, Erythrura gouldiæ. This art is not only developed towards little birds, but also in the field of the cattle, and even in Poultry. This art becomes from an ancient animals’ love, it’s a naturalistic culture owned by your people, and it’s very striking how many shows of animals and overall of poultry, and related special Clubs, you are holding during the year. Yes, the Germany recently had its biggest show in Nürnberg, the last catalogue’s number being 70,566. But, Hans wrote to me that in Zuidlaren this year are awaited 11,000 subjects, and if we compare the inhabitants and the surface of the Netherlands with these of the Germany, I think that the biggest show is yours. Obviously I have not checked these data, and I let to you the pleasure to do. I think that I am not too far from the truth.

The love for the Poultry is wonderfully expressed by the excellent hand of Van Gink, and only seldom the English Ludlow may be compared with him. The sketches of Van Gink are a treatise of the variety, we don’t need to read the text to understand what is already clearly expressed and synthesised in the image. This is culture, a very deep culture. Deep culture expressed in an excellent gift received from Mister Klaas Van der Hoek: the book Fryske Hinnen.

Another argument I am analysing in my future Fowl Genetics book, is that about the small, right size, of the Dutch Bantams. I think that all of you are aware that the sun’s light is very important for the chickens’ growth, and that the different temperature your fowls have in respect of our Mediterranean animals is compensated by the duration of the day during the good season. But, the latitude of Northern Germany is even your latitude, and so the most important reason of the right dimension of your Bantams is apparently in your capacity and perseverance in selecting. The large fowls are large also in the Netherlands as they are in Germany, and this fact demonstrates that it’s the selection and not the light the main factor of the difference between the Dutch and German Bantam subjects.

Your people is very particular. From immemorial time the fowls have entered closely into human life in a variety of ways. From the aesthetic standpoint, members of various human races have busily occupied themselves in evolving plumage coloration in bewildering variety, and have also produced changes in feather structure and body type that demonstrate the relative plasticity of the original stock of our feathered friends. I can call the Dutch people the actual vanguard in studying, in searching, in creating and, overall, in accepting all the novelties. For example, I personally know that in Germany there exists a struggle between old and young breeders, but the law is dictated by the aged people, who possess the experience, but is also conservative, seeming that they are fearing the news. Sometime I think that it happens as in our Catholic Church, where the Pope is contrary to the priests’ marriage, and almost all the priests are favourable. The future is of that people who was able to choose the best, even the news. And your Navigators are teachers in this field. And your flexibility is underlined by another thing.

Few years ago, I don’t remember when, I read in an our newspaper that the Dutch was ready to change their language by the English language. I remember that I thought: look, this people is able to renounce to his language, not because the Dutch don’t love the language of their ancestors, but because they are very practical, they are Pragmatists.

You have a big teacher in Genetics, i.e. Dr Gankema, and often I referred myself to his book to find the true way in the complex field of the genetic composition of the various plumage colours and patterns. And I think that Dr Gankema is giving to you, transformed by the science, what you have prepared to him with your breeding passion.

I can add something to my meditations in saying that another very important thing I found in the Netherlands it’s the spontaneous kindness everywhere. This is a treasure which is not written in your standard, but which is the basis of anything.

I would like finish this conversation quoting part of the Bill Plant letter I received from Australia 24th September 1994:

Your trip to the Netherlands sounds interesting. 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. 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 (USA) 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.

At this point, where are my considerations on Dutch Breeds requested by Hans? Very few words, but I think that the quality of the Breeds are hatching only from the quality of their Breeders. And the Dutch people is a people owning an excellent quality.