[To tlw Editor of the SrEcTATon.] Sia,—Since the real objection
of your correspondents to
hunting is humanitarianism, will you permit me, in default of an abler pen than mine, to defend fox-hunting from this aspect ? That the aCtual death of the fox involves an act of cruelty no one can deny. But that the preliminary pursuit of the fox is at all cruel no one who has an intimate knowledge of hunting, and is not a crank who attributes to the fox human mentality—" nerves," anticipation, and sensitive reasoning memory—can possibly maintain.
I have often watched a litter of three-parts grown cubs playing in a shrubbery within two hundred yards of the kennels, while the pack "sang." In the regular hunting season a fox may ordinarily be found within five hundred yards of these kennels, whence hounds turn out to hunt— not a silent proceeding, and surely calculated to inspire "terror "—four days a week. Not even the two hundred years during which this has been going on has scared the foxes away I Again, watch the self-confident demeanour of even a hard- pressed fox, and you will then be leas surprised at the innumerable recorded instances of hunted foxes stopping to pick up a rabbit or fowl, and giving other examples of non- chalance.
In point of fact, not one fox in twenty that shifts before hounds is killed that day, and the unlucky one, familiar with hound and horn, has no terror of anticipation, the crux of human pain.
And I submit that the very small amount of pain inflicted by fox-hunting must be balanced against the very great amount of healthy pleasure to the thousands of people who are devotedly attached to the sport.
If a comparison is made (as by your singularly uninformed correspondent, A. Lancaster Smith) I admit that there is more cruelty in the average day's deer-stalking or grouse- driving—to both of which I plead unrepentantly guilty,— than in a season's fox-hunting. Which point, incidentally, illustrates the misapprehension Of our humanitarians in their selection of the " blood-sport " as the most deserving of censure.
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