132 HISTORY OF 



prove the breed. Nothing, it is probable, could 

 do this more effectually than by crossing the 

 strain, as it is called, by a foreign mixture ; and 

 whether having recourse even to the wild cock 

 in the forests of India would not be useful, I 

 leave to their consideration. However, it is a 

 mean and ungenerous amusement, nor would I 

 wish much to promote it. The truth is, I could 

 give such instructions with regard to cock-fight- 

 ing, and could so arm one of these animals against 

 the other, that it would be almost impossible for 

 the adversary's cock to survive the first or se- 

 cond blow ; but, as Boerhaave has said upon a 

 former occasion, when he was treating upon 

 poisons, " to teach the arts of cruelty is equiva- 

 lent to committing them." 



This extraordinary courage in the cock is 

 thought to proceed from his being the most sala- 

 cious of all other birds whatsoever. A single cock 

 suffices for ten or a dozen hens ; and it is said of 

 him, that he is the only animal whose spirits are 

 not abated by indulgence. But then he soon 

 grows old; the radical moisture is exhausted; 

 and in three or four years he becomes utterly 

 unfit for the purposes of impregnation. " Hens 

 also," to use the words of Willoughby, " as they 

 for the greatest part of the year daily lay eggs, 

 cannot suffice for so many births, but for the 

 most part after three years become effete and 

 barren ; for when they have exhausted all their 

 seed-eggs, of which they had but a certain quan- 

 tity from the beginning, they must necessarily 



