354 



THE BOOK OF POULTRY. 



five minutes, and a great many are struck dead 

 much quicker than if their heads were cut clean 

 off." It is indeed a somewhat mysterious fact, of 

 which we are assured by many whom we 

 implicitly believe, that while the difficulty of 

 (apparently) killing a fowl is proverbial, very 

 often a struck cock appears to die instantly : the 

 excitement and brain pressure having probably 

 something to do with this phenomenon, which 

 seems a merciful provision of Nature, or rather 

 of that Power which overrules her provisions. 

 Thus metal spurs actually lessen, by shortening, 

 the pain inflicted ; though there can be no doubt 

 that individual blows are more sharply felt, since 

 some birds that will fight stubbornly in a natural 

 condition " will not stand steel," and others which 

 have fought well in steel, have flinched under a 

 long battle in silver spurs, which, being thicker, 

 do not cut such deadly wounds. In America, 

 spurs over i^ inches in length are often debarred, 

 expressly in order to prolong the contest, and an 

 enthusiastic cock-fighter recently wrote that " a 

 good lotig battle in silver spurs is the onlv cock- 

 fighting worthy of the name." 



From this and other causes, the actual suffer- 

 ing often lasts much more than the "few 

 minutes " spoken of above, and is of a kind 

 which we must indicate, however briefly, by a 

 few examples (which we have quoted before) 

 from unimpeachable sources. An American 

 writer (Dr. Cooper) in his work on The Game 

 Fowl, gives an account of a main between New 

 York and the Daffodil Club of Porchester, con- 

 sisting of seven battles. These occupied respec- 

 tively eight minutes, forty minutes, thirty 

 minutes (drawn), forty-three minutes, thirty- 

 three minutes ; the other two not being 

 stated. One bird fought on for forty minutes 

 with a broken wing ; and in another battle 

 "an unlucky coup" blinded the Daffodil cock, 

 which nevertheless kept on, till he somehow 

 got hold of the other and finished him after 

 all ; for which he is enthusiastically compared to 

 the " old Jackson strain," which it is said had an 

 actual reputation for " fighting better after losing 

 their eyesight." In another report of a main at 

 New Jersey in January, 1873, in four of the ten 

 battles fought, blinding occurred ; " New York 

 had both eyes torn out " being the words used to 

 describe such a result. By all the rules, legal 

 provision is made for birds being struck blind, 

 what is to be done in such cases being laid 

 down. 



Such are the actual facts of the cock-pit, as 

 described by those who have delighted in it: but 

 as already remarked, the amount of suffering 

 involved is not the real point, and forms of sport 

 not tabooed by society, may really involve more 



to the individual animal. The great difference 

 lies in this : that in other sports the suffering, be 

 it what it may, is only incidental, and is either 

 unnoticed or forgotten. In the " run across 

 country," passing by the fact that one fox affords 

 the enjoyment to a large number (which is of 

 course not any real argument at all, much less a 

 sound one), most of those who participate never 

 see tlie fox suffer, or ever think of it : the excite- 

 ment and the run is all they are conscious of. 

 To the lady who receives the brush, it is at that 

 time only a " brush " ; she has not seen the fox 

 " broken up," or torn limb from limb by the 

 pack. If she had to zvatch that every time she 

 rode to hounds, it would be very different ; it is 

 because it is not so, that such sports have no 

 inherent brutalising tendency upon those who 

 take part in them. But in cock-fighting it is far 

 otherwise. The sufferings of every bird have the 

 riveted attention of every person engaged, who 

 is thus habituated to disregard the constant sight 

 of blood and pain, in the excitement of the 

 contest and of gambling upon it. Such a state 

 of things marks off any " sport " in which it is 

 essential, widely apart from any other where it 

 is not, whatever be the actual amount of pain 

 actually caused. Take a quite different case : 

 it is not cruel to kill animals for food, if due 

 care is taken to avoid unnecessary pain ; it is 

 right to do it, and the most refined lady who 

 eats meat really does it by deputy, however she 

 may look down upon the butcher. But if the 

 slaughter-house were made a spectacle, at which 

 scores looked on, to grow excited and lay odds 

 upon the duration of life or the symptoms of 

 death, then it would become as brutalising to 

 the spectators as was the Roman arena. Like 

 that, the moral evil would consist in finding 

 pleasurable excitement in the actual circum- 

 stances of blood-shedding, suffering, and death. 



That is the real character of cock-fighting. 

 Every fresh injury to either bird is eagerly 

 watched, and perhaps recorded in the betting, 

 and has to be deliberately disregarded by the 

 " sportsman " except from that point of view. In 

 rough and rude times, when men sought to 

 inculcate disregard of pain and suffering as a 

 bulwark of the State, this had use and excuse, 

 and helped to " make men " who fought the 

 world : we recognise all that, and that there are 

 some even now from whom these instinctive 

 feelings hide much else ; but there are too many 

 proofs of the inevitable brutalising effect of the 

 cock-pit upon the mass of its votaries. The 

 faces of the crowd in that very picture by 

 Hogarth alluded to by our contributor in his 

 notes on page 350, tell their own tale; and we 

 have seen it as plainly written in those of the 



