That particular form of recreation which is euphemistically known as “sport” has a close historical connection with the practice of flesh-eating, inasmuch as the hunter was in old times what the butcher is now,--the “purveyor” on whom the family was dependent for its daily supply of victuals. Modern sport, however, as usually carried on in civilized European countries, has degenerated into what has been well described as “amateur butchery,” a system under which the slaughter of certain kinds of animals is practised less as a necessity than as a means of amusement and diversion. Just as the youthful nobles, during the savage scenes and reprisals of the Huguenot wars, used to seize the opportunity of exercising their swordsmanship, and perfecting themselves in the art of dealing graceful death-blows, so the modern sportsman converts the killing of animals from a prosaic and perhaps distasteful business into an agreeable and gentlemanly pastime. Now, on the very face of it, this amateur butchery is, in one sense, the most wanton and indefensible of all possible violations of the principle of animals’ rights. If animals--or men, for that matter--have of necessity to be killed, let them be killed accordingly; but to seek one’s own _amusement_ out of the death-pangs of other beings, this is saddening stupidity indeed! Wisely did Wordsworth inculcate as the moral of his “Hartleap Well,” “Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.” But the sporting instinct is due to sheer callousness and insensibility; the sportsman, by force of habit, or by force of hereditary influence, cannot understand or sympathize with the sufferings he causes, and being, in the great majority of instances, a man of slow perception, he naturally finds it much easier to follow the hounds than to follow an argument. And here, in his chief blame, lies also his chief excuse; for it may be said of him, as it cannot be said of certain other tormentors, that he really does not comprehend the import of what he is doing. Whether this ultimately makes his position better or worse, is a point for the casuist to decide.