94 Cochin- Chinas. 



With his propensity for exaggeration, Paddy boasted that 

 they laid five eggs in two days, each weighing three 

 ounces, that the fowls equalled turkeys in size, and 

 " Cochin eggs became in as great demand as though they 

 had been laid by the fabled golden goose. Philosophers, 

 poets, merchants, and sweeps had alike partook of the 

 mania ; and although the latter could hardly come up to 

 the price of a real Cochin, there were plenty of vagabond 

 dealers about, with counterfeit crossed birds of all kinds, 

 which were advertised to be the genuine article. For to 

 such a pitch did the excitement rise, that they who never 

 kept a fowl in their lives, and would hardly know a 

 Bantam from a Dorking, puzzled their shallow brains as 

 to the proper place to keep them, and the proper diet to 

 feed them on." Their justly-deserved popularity speedily 

 grew into a mania, and the price which had been from 

 fifteen to thirty shillings each, then considered a high price 

 for a fowl, rose to ten pounds for a fine specimen, and ulti- 

 mately a hundred guineas was repeatedly paid for a 

 single cock, and was not an uncommon price for a pair of 

 really fine birds. " They were afterwards bred," says Miss 

 Watts, " for qualities difficult of attainment, and, as the 

 result proved, little worth trying for, v and "fowls with many 

 excellent qualities were blamed for not being perfect, 1 '' and 

 they fell from their high place, and were as unjustly 

 depreciated as they had been unduly exalted. 



" Had these birds," wrote Mr. Baily many years since, 

 "been shy breeders if like song birds the produce of a 

 pair were four, or at most five, birds in the year, prices 

 might have been maintained ; but as they are marvellous 

 layers they increased. They bred in large numbers, and 

 consequently became cheaper, and then the mania ended, 

 because those who dealt most largely in them did so not 

 from a love of the birds or the pursuit, but as a specula- 

 tion. As they had over-praised them before, they now 

 treated them with contempt. Anything like a moderate 

 profit was despised, and the birds were left to their own 

 merits. These were sufficient to ensure their popularity, 

 and now after fluctuating in value more than anything 



