76 cocker's manual. 



tion. They were chiefly black-breasted reds, with white legs and a 

 white streamer in tail and flight feathers, although he latterly fought 

 some of a slashing gray strain, and he never bred a finer cock than the 

 Pile of the old Cheshire strain which Pollard printed for him and en- 

 graved in 1826, and the Earl's last mains were fought some six or 

 eight years afterwards. Potter always considered his own red duns as 

 superior to his lordship's birds. 



Dr. Bellyse, the best judge of a horse, greyhound and cock Eng- 

 land ever produced, first bred the Piles of his own country, but soon 

 got an idea that even with their matchless heels their constitutions, 

 were not equal to the punishing preparation of modern feeding, so 

 took to breeding the old dark-red strain, so successfully fought by 

 Gillier, of Warwickshire, as well. He also bred largely from the 

 noted Westgorth cock, and his crow alleys became so much sought 

 after that he was off"ered fifty guineas for a sitting hen by a visiting^ 

 nobleman. On handing him the hen there and then and crushing the- 

 eggs with his foot, his lordship remarked thai he had purchased the 

 eggs as well in the price. "No, or I should have refused a thousand," 

 wds the reply. He seldom walked out more than a thousand chickens. 

 a year, but the quality was so superior that at two years old he could 

 always select enough from them to defy all England. Six pullets to 

 their own father, or mother and two or three sisters to her own son 

 was his favorite plan, and he always persisted that he could never 

 breed them too closely. Philips fed a great many mains for him, but 

 whoever fed had to supply them with fresh sod and gravel every third 

 day. Ralph Benson of Stropshire, and Walker of his own county,. 

 usually fought him the closest, but beating him was fairly out of the 

 question. There was a suggestion made to one of the sporting peri- 

 odicals that as no one else had a chance in fighting him that the Earl 

 of Derby should fight him a grand main to prove whether the Doctor 

 was really invincible, as his friends supposed him. But the Earl's- 

 party had too much judgment to avail themselves of the beating that 

 would have been in store for them. His birds were never better than 

 at the time of his decease, and although he lived the allotted space of 

 three score years and ten, age never quenched his love of the sod. If 

 any man ever bred a superior strain of cocks to his it could only have 

 been the late Mr. Clark, of Taunhall, better known as Vaunhall Clark 

 and his phenomenon, that won the Westminster gold cup, besides 



