Painted by F. Winterhalter.

IN THE ROBES OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

DAGUERREOTYPED BY THOMPSON,

PRESENTED TO HIM BY HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN, IN 1853

[See Letter, page 130.]

THE HISTORY OF THE HEN FEVER. BY GEO. P. BURNHAM. BOSTON: JAMES FRENCH AND COMPANY. NEW YORK: J.C. DERBY. PHILADELPHIA: T.B. PETERSON.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
GEORGE P. BURNHAM,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY
HOBART & ROBBINS,
New England Type and Stereotype Foundery,
BOSTON.

GEO. C. RAND, PRINTER, 3 CORNHILL.

TO THE

OF
POULTRY,
THE SUCCESSFUL AND UNFORTUNATE DEALERS,
THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES;
AND
THE VICTIMS OF MISPLACED CONFIDENCE IN
THE HEN TRADE, GENERALLY,
I DEDICATE

PREFACE.

In preparing the following pages, I have had the opportunity to inform myself pretty accurately regarding the ramifications of the subject upon which I have written herein; and I have endeavored to avoid setting down "aught in malice" in this "History of the Hen Fever" in the United States.

I have followed this extraordinary mania from its incipient stages to its final death, or its cure, as the reader may elect to term its conclusion. The first symptoms of the fever were exhibited in my own house at Roxbury, Mass., early in the summer of 1849. From that time down to the opening of 1855 (or rather to the winter of 1854), I have been rather intimately connected with the movement, if common report speaks correctly; and I believe I have seen as much of the tricks of this trade as one usually meets with in the course of a single natural life.

Now that the most serious effects of this (for six years) alarming epidemic have passed away from among us, and when "the people" who have been called upon to pay the cost of its support, and for the burial of its victims, can look back upon the scenes that have in that period transpired with a disposition cooled by experience, I have thought that a volume like this might prove acceptable to the hundreds and thousands of those who once "took an interest in the hen trade,"—who may have been mortally wounded, or haply who have escaped with only a broken wing; and who will not object to learn how the thing has been done, and "who threw the bricks"!

If my readers shall be edified and amused with the perusal of this work as much as I have been in recalling these past scenes while writing it, I am content that I have not thrown the powder away. I have written it in perfect good-nature, with the design to gratify its readers, and to offend no man living.

And trusting that all will be pleased who may devote an hour to its pages, while at the same time I indulge the hope that none will feel aggrieved by its tone, or its text, I submit this book to the public.

Respectfully,

Geo. P. Burnham.

Russet House, Melrose, 1855.

[Pg vii-viii]

CONTENTS.