The Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Hawkins delivered a
very important judgment on Saturday in the Court for Consideration of . Crown Cases Reserved, in the case of " Ford v. Wiley," on the very cruel operation known as the dishorning of cattle,—in other words, the sawing off of the horns of cattle close to the head. For an inch or two from the tip, the horns are not sensitive, and tipping the horns of cattle, which is all that is usually done in England, is not a painful operation, and is quite sufficient to prevent their goring each other dangerously. But lower down the horns are full of vascular tissue, and to saw them off is, according to the unanimous testimony of veterinaries, excruciatingly painful. Moreover, the horns suppurate after the operation, and the pain generally continues acute for from -twenty-one to twenty-five days. The object of this operation, which has long been discontinued in England, excepting Norfolk, where it has recently been revived, which is used only in three Scotch counties, though more commonly used in Ireland, is partly to raise the price of the cattle, which it is said to do by about thirty shillings a head, and partly to render it easier to pack the beasts close. The Norfolk Magistrates had thought these reasons adequate; but the Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Hawkins reversed the decision, and declared that the addition of a few shillings to the value of an animal could not be sufficient reason for the infliction of such severe pain, when the evidence was that in all England and in almost all Scotland the practice had for twenty years or more been entirely discontinued, and had only just been revived here. Mr. Justice Hawkins even expressed his wonder that operators could be found willing to inflict pain so severe for so inadequate a reason. This decision in " Ford v. Wiley" is, we hope, likely to prove the bulwark of the right of animals to be protected from all pain disproportionate to the advantage secured by its infliction ; and we trust that it will be accepted in Ireland, and put an end there to a very cruel practice. We wish the German Courts would accept the principle of this decision, and so extinguish the cruel prac- tice of inducing diseased livers in geese, in order that epicures may enjoy Fags de foie Bras.
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