But we have no sooner answered this flimsy argument than we are met by another of a quite different character. We are told that if foxes were not preserved to be hunted they would be exterminated; and that a fox, if given his choice, would much prefer to take his chance of escaping the hounds to the alternative of extermination. This is certainly a quaint specimen of the sportsman’s logic. We are asked, in the first place, to assume an impossibility--namely, that a fox should be endowed with reason to enable him to consider and come to a decision upon the suggested question; secondly, we have to assume what his answer would be; thirdly, that that answer would be a wise one for the foxes; and, fourthly, that man ought to be bound by it. To this puerile argument it is sufficient to say that the question before us is not what a fox might, in an imaginary and impossible contingency, conceivably think best for himself, but what is right for man to do. If, therefore, the alternative be between the extermination of foxes, by methods as painless as may be, and their preservation to be hunted by man, I cannot doubt in what direction the true interests of humanity will be found to lie. To this conclusion, then, I think our reason must inevitably lead us, even with regard to the best and most popular of blood-sports as practised in this country. I do not hesitate to confess that I was brought to it with reluctance, knowing full well the pleasures of riding over a country with hounds in front and a good horse under me. But, in truth, the case seems too clear for argument. On one side are inclination and pleasure, and prescription, and the false glamour of “sport”; on the other side are “that incomparable pair”--humanity and reason.[2] THE WILD STAG HUNT.