196 ROYAL ROCK BEAGLE HUNT. 



Ferry, used to roam the country with lurchers on Sundays, and picked up 

 many a hare. These loafers went about in such numbers that, knowing 

 their strength, they had the assurance to defy farmers and others, if their 

 presence was objected to as trespassers. 



Ubc Qnxclt^ of IfDunting. 



" She hath been then more fear"d than harm'd." 



King Henry I', act i, scene 2. 



A large portion of the community, who are not sportsmen, look upon 

 hunting as a cruel sport, and do not hesitate to condemn it on that account. 

 To most beaglers the piteous cry of a hare when seized by a hound is 

 extremely heart-rending, but they are glad to know that the pain is only 

 momentary, and that, after all, a violent death is the common lot of hares. 

 Nine hundred and ninety nine out of every thousand are killed by some 

 beast or another ; indeed but for sporting, and the preservation of game 

 occasioned thereby, hares would soon be extinct : thus, hunting may be said 

 rather to preserve life than to destroy it. 



In 1892, Truth had several articles a p7-opos of the cruelty of hunting : — 



October 20th, 1892. I was amused the other day to see in the Field a 

 glowing and rapturous account of a stag-hunt on Exmoor wind up in this 

 fashion: — The pack were close to him, and, running him down the stream past 

 the ruins of Barl3'nch, they pulled him down in the water in the second field 

 above Hele Bridge. Just as the body was dragged ashore and the hounds were 

 baying round it, an excited horseman rode right in among the pack, with the 

 result that "Worcester," one of the most valued hounds in the pack, was 

 kicked in the mouth. It was piteous to see the poor beast writhing in agony 

 on the ground, while the offender tendered the usual inadequate excuse — that 

 he didn't know his horse would kick. 



Sportsmen must be curiously constituted beings. This writer finds it 

 " piteous to see the poor beast writhing in agony" after an accidental kick ; but 

 it never occurs to him to pity the other poor beast which the injured hound has 

 just had his fangs into. If it is necessary for a sportsman to express tender 

 emotions of this kind, surely the harmless and unoffending beast which has 

 been killed to give him and the dogs a day's pleasure has the first claim on him. 



January 5th, 1893. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 

 has not succeeded in putting down rabbit-coursing by a prosecution at Tyne- 

 mouth, the magistrates having decided that, although they were as much against 

 the sport as the Society, a rabbit is not a domesticated animal, and therefore 

 can have no protection from the law. I confess that I see no difference between 

 coursing a hare and coursing a rabbit, so far as the feelings of the animal are 

 concerned. If one is cruel, the other is cruel. 



But what justification have sportsmen for insisting upon keeping undomesti- 

 cated animals out of the law forbidding cruelty to animals ? This is, it seems 

 to me, an admission that their action towards wild animals is cruel. Some ten 

 years ago, a man was taken before a magistrate for the grossest cruelty to a 

 tame bear that he was leading about the country. He was let off on the ground 

 that bears are, inherently, animals /(;r<s natures, and cannot legally ever be tame. 



