The Police Magistrates are beginning to do justice as between
man and the lower animals, no less than between man and man. At Bow Street, on Wednesday, Henry Taverner, a pawn- broker's assistant, was charged with cruelty to a cat, which he had set his bull-dog to worry, and not content with that, had driven it out of its place of refuge behind the railings of Drury Lane Theatre, so that the dog had again seized it. The man replied to the remonstrances of the policeman on duty that it was his own cat, and he was at liberty to do with it what he pleased. The police officer in the end rescued the cat, but it died in his hands, the poor creature having been worried till the small bones of its ribs were torn apart. Mr. Vaughan gave the prisoner two months' imprison- ment without the alternative of a fine, to the man's great surprise. We wish equally humane-minded policemen would watch the precincts of our hospitals, and see what is done there with stray dogs and cats. The Scotsman recently published the following terse advertisement :-
DOGS and CATS (Few Useless) WANTED. Any kind of breed will snit. Apply at the Physiological Laboratory, University, between 10 and 11 a.m." ; —which means, of course,—as a canine correspondent of the Scotsman pointed out a day or two afterwards,—that these " few useless" dogs and cats were to be subjected to some treatment -which, unless it were carried on under chloroform from beginning to end, would be probably quite as deserving of notice by some Scotch Mr. Vaughan as was the conduct of the pawnbroker's assistant. Many a theft is far less guilty than this base cruelty to creatures which are in our power, and which ought to be under our protection.
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