Game fowls, their origin and history, with a description of the breeds, strains, and crosses : the American and English modes of feeding, training, and heeling; how to breed and cross, together with a description and treatment of all diseases incident to game fowls / [John W Cooper].

  • Cooper, John W., 1803-?
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Game fowls, their origin and history, with a description of the breeds, strains, and crosses : the American and English modes of feeding, training, and heeling; how to breed and cross, together with a description and treatment of all diseases incident to game fowls / [John W Cooper]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    admired this quality of courage, and many have sought to emu- late it. It is as old as chivalry, and so closely interwoven that the history of one is incomplete without the other. The game cock was in the early ages found on the continent of India, and the islands of St. lago, Pulcondore, Timor, Phillip- pine and Molucca, as well as on Sumatra, Java, New Guinea, Tonian and the isles of the South Seas. At Sumatra and Java [we learn from Rees’s English Encyclopaedia] they were noticed as being particularly large. Latham has observed that they breed most freely in warmer situations ; in very cold re- gions, though they live and thrive, they cease to multiply. We know that in Canada, the United States, Mexico and the West Indies they not only thrive but multiply quite as rapidly as any fowl. According to Mr. Pegge in the “ Archaelogia” vol. 3, No. 19, the art of cock fighting is referred to the Greeks. Jacobus Palmirius, a writer cited by Mr. Pegge, says that the traces of this diversion may be discovered among the barbarians of Asia, as early as the reign of Croesus, King of Lydia, A. M. 3426, and 558 years before Christ. The Dardanii, a people of Troas, had on their coins the representation of two cocks fighting ; but as these coins are not of a very early date, the antiquity of game cock fighting cannot be inferred from them. Mr. Pegge suggests that, perhaps, it might have been introduced among them, and also at Pergamus, from Athens, where an annual festival was instituted by Themistocles after the conclusion of the Persian war. When this famous general was heading the Athenian army against the Persians, he saw some cocks fight- ing, and took occasion from this circumstance to animate his troops by observing to them : “ These animals fight not for the Gods of their country, nor for the monuments of their ances- tors, nor for glory, nor for freedom, nor for their children, but for the sake of victory, and that one may not yield to the other,” and from the topic he inspirited the Athenians (vid Ailian, var. Hist. 2ch. 28.) Rees says, “ If we may excuse the barbarity of this institution it may be considered in some degree as com-