FARM-YARD FOWLS. 



127 



consumed, it is utterly impossible for such a 

 modeled machine to give the same amount of 

 good flesh and eggs that the finer and juster 

 bred fowls will, such as the Dorking, the Game, 

 the Spanish, the Poland, the Dominique, and 

 many other varieties we could mention. But 

 to the article alluded to : 



" ' The common sense of the public has brought 

 back the Dorking fowl to its wonted pre-emi- 

 nence. At the sale after the Metropolitan show, 

 and also at the Birmingham Exhibition of 1854, 

 the Dorking fowl met with readier sale at large 

 prices than any other bird. The public voice 

 has recognized it as the bird for the English 

 farm -yard ; it is altogether the pet of John Bull, 

 as possessing great and good qualities without 

 ostentation and clamor. The history of our 

 country town records no less than three poultry 

 sales by public auction, and at each of those the 

 Dorking fowl obtained the highest bidding 

 good hens selling for as much as thirty shillings 

 each ; and farther, the most successful breeder 

 of Dorking fowls is at this moment selling their 

 eggs readily at three guineas per dozen. These 

 and the Game fowl are the true British poultry. 

 They are racy of the soil, and come to us, like 

 many other good things, from a remote antiquity. 

 If it were possible to ingraft the hardihood and 

 the quality of the latter upon the size and early 

 maturity of the former, perfection would be ob- 

 tained. The veriest gourmand could ask no 

 more, for there would be quantity and quality 

 enough to satisfy the most capacious and capri- 

 cious of appetites. Tenderness and plumpness 

 would go hand in hand with a juiciness fitted 

 to enrapture an alderman who had passed the 

 chair, or even a metropolitan bishop. These 

 are great and critical authorities in matters of 

 taste. Bland, and unctuous, and racy as they 

 appear, they are nevertheless excessively fastid- 

 ious the terror of cooks, and the final appeal 

 in all matters appertaining to gustiveness and 

 alimentary delight ; but even such an ordeal 

 could be borne by the fowl that combined in 

 itself the respective excellences of the Dork- 

 ing and Game breed. The delicate taste of an 

 Aerial, who could sit only where the bee sipped, 

 and the greediness of an Esquimaux, might be 

 contemporaneously gratified under such a com- 



bination, and short only of this, the Dorking 

 fowl stands pre-eminent as the fowl for the table.' " 



" Those persons," says an English writer, "and 

 those only who saw and studied pen 160 at the 

 Birmingham poultry show of 1853, can form an 

 accurate idea of the size, quality, and beauty of 

 a first-rate Dorking fowl. They were the birds 

 of the exhibition, and before them the whole 

 tribe of Spanish and Cochins, black, white, 

 brown, and buff, ' paled their ineffectual fires ;' 

 thirty-five pounds' weight of the most delicate 

 meat under heaven were enshrined in beautiful 

 forms, and robed with a plumage in which rich- 

 ness and grace struggled for ascendency. 



" Although this fowl was described by Pliny, 

 by Columella, and by Aldrovandus, a thousand 

 years ago; although it has been long known 

 to naturalists as the ' Gallus Pentadactylus,' 

 or five-toed hen, and recognized through this 

 quality by every good housewife who sought a 

 good fowl in Leadenhall Market, yet strange to 

 say, it has been little patronized by the farmers 

 in general, or even by persons of greater pre- 

 tensions. Mr. Trotter, who has recently received 

 a prize from the Royal Agricultural Society for 

 the best 'Essay on Poultry,' devotes eighteen 

 lines only to the Dorking fowl, and in this quar- 

 ter page commits several errors respecting them. 

 He says ' this breed degenerates when removed 

 from its native place.' Now, it is a fact, that 

 birds bred in Lancashire have hitherto beaten 

 all competitors. The Rev. Mr. Boys, in Kent, 

 took the chief prizes at Reigate, in Surrey (the 

 very home of the Dorkings) ; but his birds, which 

 he valued at 200, were beaten utterly at Bir- 

 mingham by fowls from Lancashire, Derbyshire, 

 and Shropshire. If I were to write that the 

 Dorkings of Derbyshire may challenge the world 

 it would appear like a big, burly, blustering sen- 

 timent, 'full of sound a.nd fury signifying no- 

 thing ;' but it is nevertheless not very far from 

 the truth. Take not one county away, or one 

 division, or one town, but remove the birds of 

 one individual from competition, and then it is 

 the modest opinion of a Derbyshire Yeoman, 

 that the Dorking fowl, within a ten-mile radius 

 of his county town, may safely vie with all En- 

 gland, and therefore with all the world. To 

 the proof: in judging of public questions, we 



