BIPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS. 83 



by being placed on hot iron, or some kind of hot 

 flooring. Most persons held in just abhorrence the 

 perpetration of such cruelty, and equally properly 

 deprecated the putting a poor brute to pain, to force 

 him to do what nature never taught him to perform ; 

 and in further reprehension of such cruelty, alleged 

 there could be no use in such grotesque exhibition, 

 as it could only amuse the very low. I will suppose 

 a reader and a brother sportsman to have been 

 anathematising the bear-leading fraternity, in which 

 heart and soul I join him ; but enthusiastic as we 

 may both be as sporting men, let us be also as just 

 as our judgment enables us to be ih our deductions 

 and conclusions, and also calm and dispassionate in 

 our reasoning. It certainly is not a natural act of 

 the bear to dance, if a dance it could be called, and 

 it is barbarous to punish him to make him do it ; 

 but we are not to suppose if what has been men- 

 tioned was the method employed to make the bear 

 dance, that he was put on red hot iron, or iron hot 

 enough to injure his feet materially, but must infer 

 it was just hot enough to prevent his standing still ; 



