594 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK vii. 



its greatest cultivation where agriculture and manufactures attain their 

 highest development. It was not long after its introduction that the 

 ancients began to take advantage of the natural combativeness of the 

 cock, and thus to minister to their own ideas of pleasure. Literature 

 contains man}?- references to cock-fighting, for the fights between cocks 

 became a striking theme for poets as soon as the fowl was a familiar 

 object. In the " Eumenides " of ^Eschylus, Athena warns the Athenians 

 against civil war as resembling the combats of cocks. Pindar compares 

 the inglorious victories of civil war to the victories of a barn-door fowl. 

 And it is stated that Themistocles raised the courage of his soldiers 

 by reminding them how two fighting-cocks risk their lives, not for the 

 hearth and its Penates, but for fame alone. The fighting cock was 

 sacred to Ares and Pallas Athene. Plutarch states that at Sparta, on 

 the close of a campaign, two kinds of sacrifice were in use : he who 

 had attained his end by craft and persuasion sacrificed a bullock ; he 

 who had gained it by fighting, a cock. A superstition peculiar to the 

 rocky town of Methana, between Epidauros and Troezen, mentioned 

 by Pausanias, is likewise connected with the worship of Apollo in that 

 district. To avert the evil influence of Libs, the south-east wind, on 

 the vines, two men would cut a cock in halves, and each run with 

 one-half in opposite directions round the vineyard, and then bury the 

 bird on the spot where they met. Soon after the appearance of cocks 

 and hens in Greece, whole families of fowls must have been transported 

 to Sicily and South Italy, and there, as in Greece, they spread from house 

 to house. The oldest representations of the cock on coins and vases, 

 in Greece, Sicily, and Italy, do not extend beyond the second half of 

 the sixth century B.C. 



So much for the origin and wanderings of the domestic fowl. We 

 shall have something to say as to the modern evolution of breeds in 

 the next chapter. But we must now look at the present state of 

 affairs in respect to poultry matters both at home and abroad, for 

 there is a much wider question involved than that of race and breeds. 

 Poultry-keeping may give pleasure to large numbers of people, but 

 unless it can be profitable to individuals and to the nation at large, it 

 must sink to the level of one of those pursuits which are as fickle as 

 fashion. 



Since the first edition of " The Complete Grazier " was published 

 there has been a vast change in the consumption of poultry products 

 and the farmers at home have not by a long way met the increased 

 demands, consequently we see the volume of imports from abroad 

 advancing year by year. In fact, it is to be questioned whether the 

 home production is as great as it was fifty years ago, for the era of 

 large farms has operated against the old yeoman farmer class, who were 

 large producers of poultry. Be this, however, as it may, the fact 

 remains that we import from abroad enormous quantities of eggs and 

 poultry, and that these imports are rapidly increasing nearly every year. 

 In 1856 our imports of eggs were chiefly from France, and in that year 

 were valued at 278,422. In 1907 France only sent us about one- 

 fifteenth of our foreign supply, and yet we paid to that country the sum 



