Dr Elio Corti
Valenza - Italy

1-2-1996

Dear Elio,

I have been very busy, busy in answering letters as I have been receiving quite a few. I got behind while I had the shingles (5 weeks) but now I have recovered and feeling much better.

I have another contact from the US who read my article on Avicultura. He is interested in the origins of chickens and pigeons. I sent him material and he has sent me some. I will send you a copy of the material when I get the opportunity.

I have to reply to Moscow, Ukraine and Rudi in Germany and have had work to do on the Club Newsletter. We are getting orders from Veronica for the Pekin book think it will sell well in the UK. I had a letter from Veronica. She gave me details of how to get to her house just out of London.

The Rhode Island book is ready to print and I received orders for the Australorp and OEG Colours books from Veronica. I have to get Tony to print some more of these.

You mentioned you may travel to Brazil. I think it would be difficult to get to Araucana territory and also difficult to find any good Araucana chickens. Someone went down there some years ago and could not find any birds that were even close to pure breed. I think the Araucana is a very mixed up race of chickens. You should find blue eggs in Brazil. That seems to be the only trait that breeds true.

Romanov gave me some very constructive comment on my work. He is very knowledgeable. He wrote a long letter and sent me some material. I would enjoy meeting all the people at Bergamo and also Professor Prota. I think there would be much to learn from these meetings.

The Czech Standard sounds interesting. All countries seem to have standards except Australia, I contacted a fellow I knew who before he retired was head Librarian at the University in Newcastle, asking his advice as to what procedure I should use in an endeavour to get some assistance for my researches. He advised me to write to the General Director of the National Library of Australia and explain my situation. I have done this and hope that I might get some ideas. He also suggested other avenues, so I am also going to contact a representative here in Australia of the World Poultry Science Association. I think Romanov is involved in this organisation. I have lodged my application for the passport. It should not take very long to arrive I am told.

I have put the ex libris stickers in some of my books. It looks good. Tomorrow I start again with the old people. There has been a vacation over Christmas period. Joyce and Max are going on holidays again on Saturday for one month.

I hope your book is progressing well. Stromberg tells me his Encyclopaedia will be published in March. There should be some interesting information in it. Pleased to hear you made contact with Hoffmann. I haven’t heard from him for sometime. He travels a lot to check up on his experiments. We have had some very hot days but this summer the weather is very unstable.

I hope the material I sent you a couple of weeks ago has arrived OK. I have another aboriginal book. I will send you later. I think if there had been any blue eggs around Darwin would have noted them. Romanov told me there is a Darwinism Museum in Moscow. I guess you visited it. Should be interesting.

Must press on. Will write again soon.

Regards.