IRature IRotes: 
Zhe Selborne Society’s HDagasine. 
No. 26. FEBRUARY, 1892. Vol. III. 
“ SPORT.” 
ROM time to time the public mind is shocked by some 
revelation of brutality exercised against either human 
beings or animals, and its virtuous indignation is 
wonderful — while it lasts. It may even be said, 
strange as it may seem, that our sympathy with animals is 
stronger than our affection for our own race ; for the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established long 
before that for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children ; while 
sarcastic folk have more than once pointed out the want of 
proportion between the horror expressed at cutting off cows’ 
tails, and that which was aroused by the revelations of famine 
as affecting a country side. But of course that was in Ireland. 
Just recently people have been horrified — and with reason — 
at the revelations of rabbit-coursing, as practised about New* 
castle-on-Tyne, made by Col. Conlson in The Anivial’s Guardian 
for December last. This “ sport ” is indulged in by thousands, 
“ nearly every day in the week, especially on Saturdays,” and 
sometimes on Sundays : it has been condoned by no less im- 
portant a personage than the Right Honourable James Lowther, 
at a meeting of the Gimcrack Club, York, in i8go, who spoke 
of it'in terms of semi-admiration, and alluded to the protests 
made against it as “ canting lies.” We have neither desire 
nor space to reproduce the sickening account in full, the follow- 
ing extracts from Col. Coulson’s letter will suffice : 
“ At the end of the course where stood the crowd, two dogs, yelping and barking 
in an excited manner, were being held by handkerchiefs round their necks. Close 
beside the dogs was a sack containing rabbits. At a distance of twenty-live yards 
from this was a peg, marked by a bit of newspaper. This peg is named ‘ the 
twenty-five yards law ! ’ A rabbit was taken from the sack and dangled in front 
of each dog’s nose. The look of agony on each poor rabbit’s countenance whilst 
that was being done was truly piteous to witness. . . . After the dang- 
ling process had gone on for a short time the man ran out with the rabbit to the 
