The Greyhound 623 



sport was tried in England but it did not take, the feeling being that the 

 hares did not have a fair chance and that it too much resembled rabbit 

 racing by whippets. The San Francisco enclosures are, we believe, much 

 larger than the English ones and sufficient escapes are provided for the hares 

 so that the sport is a very close imitation of what would be seen in the field, 

 without the hard work of following the beat. To pass laws prohibiting 

 coursing in the interests of the prohibition of cruelty to animals and permit 

 of the unmitigated brutality of "rabbit hunts" where thousands of them are 

 clubbed to death in the centre of a human enclosure,, so massed as to prevent 

 the escape of a single animal, is the straining-at-a-gnat and swallowing-a- 

 camel principle carried to the extreme. Coursing is infinitely to be pre- 

 ferred to shooting as it is less liable to give unnecessary pain, for a hare cap- 

 tured by greyhounds is instantly killed and if it escapes it is uninjured, 

 whereas a wounded hare may escape capture and die a lingering death or 

 only recover, after his broken leg has healed, to remain a life cripple. 



The inflexibility of sporting custom is well illustrated in the very small 

 amount of change made in the coursing rules since the original code was 

 drawn up at the request of Queen Elizabeth. Such rules as the Duke of 

 Norfolk then put on record were undoubtedly based upon the custom in 

 force among the better class of sportsmen of that period and were no new de- 

 parture, though local usage doubtless had occasionally to be changed to fit 

 the new code. The principle of deciding merit between two dogs upon clev- 

 erness and ability to overcome the wiles of the hare and not merely upon the 

 kill of the quarry, must then have been fully recognized and shows the em- 

 inently sportsmanlike stage which had been arrived at in England at that 

 time. Since then there have been a few additions to the code making it 

 more specific. 



According to the degree of speed shown in the run up the faster dog 

 scores one, two or three points. The run-up ends when the hare turns, and 

 if a full turn is caused by one of the dogs that dog gains one point, a wrench 

 being half a point. Passing another dog is called a go-by and scores two 

 points, and if done by the dog running on the outer circle he gets three 

 points. One point is scored by a dog tripping or flecking the hare, but not 

 holding it fast. The actual kill may count two points if of merit, but all de- 

 pends upon how it is done and it may count nothing if the other dog turned 

 the hare so that the dog that made the kill could not help getting the hare 

 and did nothing on his part towards that end except to lay hold of what was 



