CocJi -fighting in the Philippines. 31 3 



commencement of the combat is given. Each owner caresses 

 or incites once more his champion, or to prove his courage 

 flings him against one of the other cocks. At last the spec- 

 ta'tors have decided to back one or the other of the cocks, red 

 or white, the flat comb or the round comb ; the bets are '' on," 

 and the '' spur," a sharp-pointed weapon above two inches 

 in length, and provided with a sheath, is firmly attached to 

 the right foot. Then the two cocks are simultaneously 

 swung against each other, and a few feathers are plucked 

 from their necks to excite their fury. The bell in the hand 

 of the director gives the signal for the commencement of the 

 ^^main." The spectators retire from the "pit," the sheaths 

 are taken off the trenchant spurs, and the encounter com- 

 mences. Most marvellous is the eagerness for the fray, the 

 dogged valour, which these two knightly antagonists display 

 to the very last gasp ; how even wounded, bleeding, and 

 sorely fatigued, they will not give up the contest ! Occa- 

 sionally it happens that neither of the combatants is hailed 

 the victor. The extraordinary keen, sharp ''spur" some- 

 times wounds both warriors with terrible severity, till with 

 severed limbs, and bleeding from every pore, both lie dead 

 on the field of battle.* 



• Cock-fighting has been so long disused in England, that to most persons it only 

 lingers as a grim tradition, mainly authenticated by Hogarth's well-known painting. 

 The degrading associations which a cock-fight generated are sufficiently well illus- 

 trated by the prince of pictorial satirists. The "betting-ring" still brings together 

 in England the same intermingling of grades of society, and consequent utter disrup- 

 tion of all social respect, but with all its faults it never has, nor can have, the same 

 brutalizing effects of cock-fighting, which are instanced by the following anecdote, 



