The most minute details are given as to the selection of fighting-cocks, the breeding of game cocks, and 'the dieting and ordering a cock for battle.' Under this last head we read:--'In the morning take him out of the pen, and let him spar a while with another cock. Sparring is after this manner. Cover each of your cock's heels with a pair of hots made of bombasted rolls of leather, so covering the spurs that they cannot bruise or wound one another, and so setting them down on straw in a room, or green grass abroad; let them fight a good while, but by no means suffer them to draw blood of one another. The benefit that accrues hereby is this: it heateth and chafeth their bodies, and it breaketh the fat and glut that is within them. Having sparred as much as is sufficient, which you may know when you see them pant and grow weary, then take them up, and, taking off their hots, give them a diaphoretic or sweating, after this manner. You must put them in deep straw-baskets, made for this purpose, and fill these with straw half way, then put in your cocks severally, and cover them over with straw to the top; then shut down the lids, and let them sweat; but don't forget to give them first some white sugar-candy, chopped rosemary, and butter, mingled and incorporated together. Let the quantity be about the bigness of a walnut; by so doing you will cleanse him of his grease, increase his strength, and prolong his breath. Towards four or five o'clock in the evening take them out of their stoves, and, having licked their eyes and head with your tongue, and put them into their pens, and having filled their throats with square-cut manchet, **** therein, and let them feed whilst the****is hot; for this will cause their scouring to work, and will wonderfully cleanse both head and body.' Was ever poor animal subjected to such indignity? The preparation of the other animal, the jockey, is nothing to it. But, to continue:-- 'The second day after his sparring, take your cock into a fair green close, and, having a dunghill cock in your arms, show it him, and then run from him, that thereby you may entice him to follow, permitting him to have now and then a blow, and thus chafe him up and down about half an hour; when he begins to pant, being well-heated, take him up and carry him home, and give him this scouring, &c.' This training continued for six weeks, which was considered a sufficient time for 'ordering a cock for the battle;' and then, after the 'matching,' came the last preparation of the poor biped for the terrible fight in which he would certainly be either killed or kill his antagonist, if both were not doomed to bite the dust. This consisted in the following disfigurement of the beautiful creature:--