. Cruelty to animals is one of those things about
which it is no use arguing. If anyone is insensible to it, or pre- pared to defend it., there is nothing more to be said. The attempt to rehabilitate cock-fighting, even on the part of a counsel making a case for the defence, is one of those efforts so certain to fail that it would be a good deal better not to make it. In a prosecution in Westmorland on Saturday, defending counsel recalling the days when cock-fighting was an aristocratic sport (so it was—the Stuart kings had their own Masters of the Cockpits in Bird Cage. Walk and elsewhere) suggested that people nowadays look on cock-fighting with horror because they read so much about it in the. papers. A rather better reason for their emotion is such evidence as was gi% en for the prosecution in the same case, to the effect that after two cocks had fought for about a minute, one bird was injured and a man picked it up, put its beak in his mouth and sucked blood from its throat because it was chokinu. Only three-days earlier a fight was reported from Hamp- shire and in both cases quite inadequate fines were imposed.- It is a hard- enough job for the-police to get track of the fights and drop on the guilty parties at the right moment. The least magistrates can do is to back them up to the full extent of 'the penalties allowed by law.
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