364 RURAL SPORTS. [ART II. 



CHAP. XII. 



RURAL SPORTS. 



\ 



369. THERE are persons, who question the 

 right of man to pursue and destroy the wild 

 animals, which are called game. Such per 

 sons, however, claim the right of killing foxes 

 and hawks; yet, these have as much right to 

 live and to follow their food as pheasants and 

 partridges have. This, therefore, in such per 

 sons, is nonsense. 



370. Others, in their mitigated hostility to the 

 sports of the field, say, that it is wanton cruelty 

 to shoot or hunt; and that we kill animals from 

 the farm-yard only because their flesh is neces 

 sary to our own existence. PROVE THAT. 

 No : you cannot. If you could, it is but the 

 " tyrant's plea ;" but you cannot : for we know 

 that men can, and do, live without animal food, 

 and, if their labour be not of ail exhausting 

 kind, live well too, and longer than those who 

 eat it. It comes to this, then, that we kill hogs 

 and oxen because we choose to kill them ; and, 

 we kill game for precisely the same reason. 



371. A third class of objectors, seeing the 



