182 CLASS AVES. 



To compensate for this, we have the example of our glorious 

 third Edward, who prohibited cock fighting, under severe 

 penalties ; and of Oliver Cromwell, who, whatever his political 

 or religious adversaries may have objected to him, was 

 neither a coward, a fool, nor a tyrant. The sport, however, is 

 on the decline : and we might congratulate our fellow-country- 

 men on this symptom of improvement, if the fashionable 

 taste had not taken another turn, and the favourite diversion 

 become, not the pitting of cocks against each other, but of 

 men ! This will, doubtless, in its turn, give way to some other 

 criminal absurdity, equally worthy of reprobation, and its 

 extinction afford another ground for mole-eyed philosophers 

 to felicitate the world on the march of human intellect and 

 virtue ! 



It would be superfluous to enter into any description of the 

 common cock and hen, or to notice the different varieties in 

 their plumage, which are innumerable. It is sufficient to 

 observe, that, as with the vast majority of birds, the female is 

 smaller and less brilliantly plumed than the male, in all 

 species and varieties. 



The stomach of the cock is singularly muscular, and fur- 

 nished internally with a tunic almost cartilaginous. The 

 action of the muscles produces a friction in the interior of the 

 storiiach, which rapidly comminutes not only aliments of every 

 description, but will in a few hours wear down the surfaces 

 of globes of glass, and reduce the whole to powder ; triangles 

 too, of glass, even with greatly acerated points, are blunted 

 in a very little time ; nay, even points of steel, implanted in 

 a ball of lead, are equally worn down by this violent action 

 of the muscles. In the works of Spallanzani, the proofs of 

 this may be found, in the account of the various experiments 

 performed by that philosopher, on the digestive organs of the 

 cock. 



Properly speaking, the cock has three stomachs ; the first, 



