94 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



courage of these birds should be displayed to man as au 

 example 1 " 



" I do." 



" And in the method pursued in Bob Dolly's cockpit ? :; 



" Ah, there you press me too hard now. I can only say 

 that, if they do fight at all, the arming them with artificial 

 weapons is the very reverse of cruelty, for the contest is 

 sooner ended, and their sufferings trilling in comparison 

 to what they would have been, had they fought with their 

 own natural weapons, by lacerating and bruising each 

 other in every tender part. And hence may be formed 

 a comparison between the duellist and the pugilist. The 

 duellist meets his adversary like the gamecock, voluntarily, 

 and with artificial weapons also ; whereas the pugilist is 

 urged to fight merely by a prospect of gain, and to fight 

 with natural weapons, receiving blows and bruises, 

 frequently to the very point of death, to amuse a 

 crowd of spectators. I am inclined, then, to think that, 

 after all, cock-fighting is one of the least cruel of all 

 our sports in which the lives of animals are put to the 

 risk. But it is not so much the mere act of fighting, and 

 the display of courage in the gamecock, that excite my 

 admiration : it is, as I said before, the entire system 

 throughout, and the wonderful phenomena that occur 

 in breeding and training these birds. We will commence 

 with the breeding, and the importance of similarity of 

 feather. Where is the philosopher who can discover this 

 necessity ? but so it is. Several attempts were made, 

 some years back, to cross the Cheshire piles with piles 

 from other countries, and those of great note ; but, from 

 a trifling dissimilarity of feather, the breed was very 

 inferior to the original one. But even in the Cheshire 

 piles, the necessity arises of not mixing the dark and 

 light- coloured ones together. Then, again, the fidelity 

 with which uniformity of colour is preserved, is no less 

 astounding. A celebrated breeder of cocks thus writes 

 on this subject : ' Fifteen years or more I had enjoyed 

 an invariable production of the most complete black-reds 

 bred by any amateur, without a single instance of devia- 

 tion during that period ; but, on the sixteenth year, I 

 had several light piles in one hatch . No change of eggs 

 could possibly have taken place, nor was there a shadow 

 of doubt of interference with any other cock. A well- 

 regulated account of my cocks, however, enabled me to 



