I once reared a game-cock by hand, keeping him secluded from his kind until he was adult. I then placed him in a large collection of barnyard fowl where there were half a dozen mongrel cocks, a drake of the muscovy variety, several ganders, and two turkey-gobblers. Immediately and in rapid succession he settled his accounts with the males of his own kind. He shortly overcame the drake and the ganders. He then devoted what was left of his forces to battles with the turkeys. Here he found himself in great difficulty, for the reason that these great birds would seize him by the head and lift his body off the ground. However, he soon learned an ingenious trick which protected him from this danger. When gathering breath in the intervals between his assaults, he would hover himself between his antagonist's legs, keeping step with the awkward creature in its efforts to get away from him. In a few days he wore out these doughty foemen and remained the battered master of the field. Although the indomitable valor of the game-cock may be in some measure due to the selection which the breeder has applied to the variety, there can be no question that it is essentially natural to the species and is the result of an age-long habit which in the native wilds of the creature did much to insure its safety. The antiquity of the state of mind may be judged by the perfection to which the spurs have attained and the remarkably skilful and definite way in which the creatures use them. The spur, which has arisen from the development of the scales and underlying bone of the bird's leg, is a singularly perfect structure, the finish of which cannot be judged in the degraded form in which it is found in our ordinary barnyard species. Although in its construction this weapon is admirably devised, it is placed in a position where only a remarkably well-addressed movement can give effect to its blow. Those who have watched game-cocks in combat have had a chance to see the vaults by which the creature, partly turning in the air, is able to throw the spur in such a manner that it shares the impulse of the body when it strikes the antagonist. This peculiar craft has been in good part lost among our common varieties. Their spiritless contests differ as much from those of the game-birds as do the fist fights of untrained men from the contests of skilled pugilists. [Illustration: Bantams, Brahma, and Dorkings]