Of the cruelty of coursing, as practised in the chief contests, from the Waterloo Cup down, there can be no question. “What more aggravated form of torture is to be found,” says Lady Florence Dixie, “than coursing with greyhounds--the awful terror of the hare depicting itself in the laid-back ears, convulsive doubles, and wild starting eyes which seem almost to burst from their sockets in the agony of tension which that piteous struggle for life entails?” Open coursing is bad enough, on the score of inhumanity; but when the coursing is enclosed, or the hares are bagged ones turned out for the occasion, the case is still worse. The use of enclosed grounds dates from about 1876, and we learn from the volume on “Coursing” in the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes (1892), that “many of the old school opposed it strongly, and with the best reason, for it utterly lacked the elements of real sport.” At the present time it is by a strict system of “preserving” hares rather than by keeping them in enclosures, that a sufficient supply is maintained for the great coursing matches. What an object-lesson in cruelty these meetings afford may be judged from the fact that at some of them, such as the competition for the Waterloo Cup, there is an attendance of several thousand spectators. Here is an “Impression of the Waterloo Meeting,” by Mr. John Gulland, which appeared in the _Morning Leader_ in 1911: “Stretching away into the far country (if you use your eyes) may be seen two long, thin black lines, representing quite a little army of beaters. In a short while dozens of hares may be seen gaily sporting between these lines, in delightful ignorance of the terrible enemy which is lying in wait for them in front. It is the business of the beater to divert a good hare from his playful companions; and if you keep your eye well directed on the black lines, you will soon detect the white flutter of a handkerchief passing along the lines, and a brown shape leaping swiftly along the ground, nervously anxious to turn to one side or the other, but kept to an inexorable straight course by the living wall of beaters. A shout from the crowd, growing every moment more excited as the short drama is about to begin, proclaims the fact that the hare is in the battle-ground, and is about to meet his Waterloo. And, higher still, and louder than all, the raucous cry of the bookmaker, ‘Take 7 to 2,’ ‘Take 2 to 1,’ rises shrill in the air.