VI ADVERTISEMENT. 



After the late recommendation of Bull-baiting from such 

 high authority, it is disheartening to offer any thing on the 

 subject of justice and kindness to beasts. It is almost equally 

 discouraging, to reflect on the total want of discrimination, 

 from mere passion and prejudice, in the professed advocates 

 of humanity. In real probability, this last is the greater 

 bar to reform. How are we to reconcile a classification of 

 Bull-baiting, Boxing, and Horse-racing, with the genuine 

 logic of humanity or common sense ? The principle of the 

 first is totally inadmissible on the score of barbarity and in- 

 justice, and a pure defect of necessity. It is against the 

 improper practice solely, of the other, that a word can be 

 urged. Are we to abolish the use of wine, because mad- 

 men and fools get drunk ? Is there no difference between 

 staking the abhorrent and fear-stricken animal to the torture, 

 and voluntary combats — none between extreme and lin- 

 gering torments, and euthanasia, or easy death ? 



The amateurs of Trotting, in the Metropolis, have 

 lately witnessed the extraordinary performances of the 

 brown mare Phenomena. In her first great match, she 

 trotted seventeen miles, in somewhat less than fifty-three 

 minutes, carrying five stone. 1 in vain laboured for a 

 number of years, to convince our trotting jockeys of the 

 proportional effect of weight in that pace ; my book, how- 

 ever (Vol. I. p. 242) has succeeded, where I personally 

 failed. Little doubt can now remain, that one or two of 

 the horses named in the chapter on trotting, were able to 

 have performed twenty miles in one hour ; and that with 

 much less injury to themselves, than usually accrued from 

 their performances with high weights. 



It is requested of the classical reader to pardon the 

 adoption of the spurious word equestrian, which has, some 

 how or other, crept into use, in writings of this species ; he 

 will do the author an additional favour by furnishing him 

 with a more legitimate term. 



