Their colours now comprise different shades of red and deep chestnut, in combination with rich browns, and there are also black and white varieties, each of which should be uniform. The feathers should be hard and close, which causes it to be heavier than it appears.
Malays are inferior to most other breeds as layers, but the pullets commence laying early, and are often good winter layers. Their eggs, which weigh about 2½ ounces each, are of a deep buff or pale chocolate colour, surpass all others in flavour, and are so rich that two of them are considered to be equal to three of ordinary fowls. They are nearly always fertile.
Their chief excellence is as table fowls, carrying, as they do, a great quantity of meat, which, when under a year old, is of very good quality and flavour. Crossed with the Spanish and Dorking, they produce excellent table fowls; the latter cross being also good layers.
Malays are good sitters and mothers, if they have roomy nests. Their chickens should not be hatched after June, as they feather slowly, and are delicate; but the adult birds are hardy enough, and seem especially adapted to crowded localities, such as courts and alleys. "Malays," says Mr. Baily, "will live anywhere; they will inhabit a back yard of small dimensions; they will scratch in the dust-hole, and roost under the water-butt; and yet not only lay well, but show in good condition when requisite." Like the Game fowl, it is terribly pugnacious, and in its native country is kept and trained for fighting. This propensity, which is still greater in confinement, is its greatest disadvantage. When closely confined they are apt to eat each other's feathers, the cure for which is turning them into a grass run, and giving them a good supply of lettuce leaves, with an occasional purgative of six grains of jalap. The Chittagong is said to be a variety of the Malay.
CHAPTER XIII.
GAME.
This is the kind expressly called the English breed by Buffon and the French writers, and is the noblest and most beautiful of all breeds, combining an admirable figure, brilliant plumage, and stately gait. It is most probably derived from the larger or continental Indian species of the Javanese, or Bankiva Jungle Fowl—the Gallus Bankiva of Temminck—which is a distinct species, distinguished chiefly from the Javanese fowl by its larger size. (See [page 124].) Of this continental species, Sir W. Jardine states that he has seen three or four specimens, all of which came from India proper. The Game cock is the undisputed king of all poultry, and is unsurpassed for courage. The Malay is more cruel and ferocious, but has less real courage. Game fowls are in every respect fighting birds, and, although cock-fighting is now very properly prohibited by law, Game fowls are always judged mainly in reference to fighting qualities. But their pugnacious disposition renders them very troublesome, especially if they have not ample range, although it does not disqualify them for small runs to the extent generally supposed. A blow with his spur is dangerous, and instances have been recorded of very severe injuries inflicted upon children, even causing death. An old newspaper states that "Mr. Johnson, a farmer in the West Riding of Yorkshire, who has a famous breed of the Game fowl, has had the great misfortune to lose his little son, a boy of three years old, who was attacked by a Game cock, and so severely injured that he died shortly afterwards." High-bred hens are quite as pugnacious as the cocks. The chickens are very quarrelsome, and both cocks and hens fight so furiously, that frequently one-half of a brood is destroyed, and the other half have to be killed.