CHAPTER XXIII. 
DORKINGS. 
Even the Game fowl can hardly be regarded as a more thoroughly English breed than the 
Dorking, though the latter was raised for far other objects, and to a far different standard of 
perfection. If the one has typified the national quality of hard fighting, the other may equally 
and fitly symbolise the decided penchant for “good living” which distinguishes John Bull all over 
the world. It has been well said of him, that he can fight on an empty stomach, but he much 
prefers to fill it first ; and our Dorking is a contribution to the process which no one need despise. 
Before the poultry-fancy had been heard or thought of, the Dorking had been bred to a high 
standard of perfection, simply as a fowl for the table ; and after all competitors have tried their 
best, even the vaunted French fowls have not displaced it, and it still remains — take it all in all — 
the favourite table breed of those best of all judges, the London poulterers. 
As in the case of the Game fowl, it is very difficult to determine the origin of Dorkings ; 
indeed, really to settle the point may safely be pronounced impossible. Conjectures, supported by 
more or less of probability, are all that can be offered ; and we must say that of such probabilities 
almost all, in our opinion, point to the conclusion that much of the breed in question, at least, was 
introduced by the Romans. In the well-known passage, where the old writer Columella gives the 
then accepted ideas as to the “ points ” which should be sought in selecting stock, it is quite true 
that he differs seriously from the present Dorking, not only in colour, which he describes as “red,” 
but also in comb, which he says should be both small and erect, differing thus from either type of 
comb which is now accepted. But he speaks so distinctly of the “ square frame,” large and broad 
breast, large head, and, above all, of the “ five claws” which mark the Dorking more strongly than 
any other point, that these, in our opinion, far outweigh all minor differences, and prove that the 
breed now to be considered, in all its main essentials, was known ever so many centuries ago to the 
gourmands of the Roman world. That it should be an indigenous British fowl, when it was 
unlawful to eat fowl at all in Britain, is scarcely likely of so pre-eminently a table breed ; and 
hence we come to the conclusion that the Dorking — as we know it now — is the more or less 
direct descendant of those birds which in old Columella’s days were most prized by the poultry- 
keepers of Rome. 
The intermediate stages of descent are of course impossible to determine ; but it is certain 
that the Coloured or Grey Dorking of a quarter of a century since, just before the poultry mania 
burst upon the astonished public, was not the Dorking of the present day, which could not be 
called grey by any stretch of the imagination. But the Dorking of those days zuas grey, the 
plumage of the hens being of a very neat grey speckle, rarely seen now, occasionally running very 
nearly into that now called silver-grey by fanciers. The size was also smaller, and the shape of 
body somewhat shorter and more compact. The White Dorking with rose comb was also well 
known ; and as this last always bred true, while the grey-speckled birds varied much in comb, and 
were very uncertain about the fifth claw, it is most probable that the genuine Dorking stock — 
