MR. RUSKIN ON SPORT.
(TO THY EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."1
SIR,—Nearly thirty years ago, after some chance words on the subject, I wrote to Mr. Ruskin defining " sport " and
" cruelty in sport " in much the same terms as does Mr. Harold Russell in the Spectator of March 15th, and my defi- nitions met with an approval which Mr. Ruskin's reply remains the testament of. As Mr. Ruskin had on more than one occasion eaten, and evidently enjoyed, grouse of my own shooting, I was able to pose him with the question bow he would have these wild hill birds "provided" more mercifully than by sudden and unforeseen death from gunshots. He had to allow that he saw no better way. So much for the " sportsman's " plea. As to " cruelty " practised under the name of "sport," perhaps I put the matter somewhat differently from Mr. Russell, but the substance was the same. I started with the thesis that it is " cruel " to catch any wild creature, keep it cooped up, and then at our own signal, under our own fore-planned conditions, to let it out to undergo a second chance of being caught, killed, or wounded. To any timid wild creature the first catching and holding captive must be indeed " death " enough ; and for men to try to extract " sport" out of their letting such a creature loose, amid terribly strange and startling sur- roundings—probably in a glare of light out of the cramped space and cooped-up darkness, and in the ;midst often of a crowded semi-circle of noisy spectators—seems to me to be the very refinement of " cruelty," and so utterly unworthy of the name of " sport." I write as a shooter and fisher for the last fifty years, and I ask to be allowed to second Mr. Harold Russell's " definition " of " sport," and of " cruelty " under the name of " sport."—I am, Sir, &c.,
BOSCOMBROSA.
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