FOX-HUNTING [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sfa,—The real issue,
it has always seemed to me, is : Do foxes enjoy their lives as a whole ? Is there, even for the fox who is killed in the end, a balance of happiness ? If so, the case against fox-hunting clearly collapses ; for it is beyond question that but for fox-hunting, the fox in England would long ago have been as extinct as the dodo. The poultry-keepers would have seen to that !
When our humanitarians are all vegetarians too, then, and not till then, they will be entitled to denounce hunting as cruel. They cannot consistently do so as long as they allow the killing of animals to supply them with food. Which of us would prefer death in the slaughterhouse to death in the field—with a sporting chance of life ? And so far as the human motive is to be taken into account, the exhilaration of a run and the qualities it calls into play are things infinitely more desirable than the pleasures of the table, or even the supposed body-building values of animal food.
No doubt in fox-hunting, as in many other things, there are survivals from coarser times which should be given up- " blooding " certainly, and the " digging-out " of a fox is surely against the spirit of the game.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Moyse.s, Five Ashes, Sussex.
LIONEL JAMES.
[There is much force in our correspondent's argument that humanitarians, who are not vegetarians, have not the same right to denounce fox-hunting as those who are. So long as 90 per cent. of the animals killed in Great Britain are killed by inhumane methods, we think lovers of animals should concentrate their efforts on this problem of greater urgency because of the large numbers involved. Setting aside for the present the ethics of fox-hunting, there can be no two opinions as to degrading practices of "blooding" and of digging out the quarry except, in the latter case perhaps, in quite exceptional circumstances. We think that followers of hounds are much the same as ordinary mortals, no better and no worse, and we know that many of them dislike both these practices. Will they not make a serious attempt to rid their sport of a well- deserved odium which attaches to it in these two matters? —En. Spectator.]
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