[5] Moreover, there is a sport which, as the Rev. J. Stratton has pointed out, might well supersede rabbit-coursing--viz., whippet-racing. “It cannot be pleaded,” he says, “that if we were to stop the coursing of captured rabbits we should be unduly depriving workmen of recreation, for ‘whippets’ could be employed just as well in races as in chasing rabbits. Of the first of these sports I can speak as an eye-witness. In whippet-racing a course is formed, which is kept free for the dogs by ropes on either side. At one end, men have in hand the whippets that are about to compete, and here stands the starter, holding his pistol. ‘Runners-up’ now come on to the course, carrying in their hands a towel or scarf, and starting from the front of the dogs, and frantically waving the article they hold, and whistling, and calling to the animals, they begin to run towards the far end of the course, where the winning-line is marked out and the judge has taken up his post. When the right moment has arrived, the pistol is fired, and the whippets are liberated, and commence to travel the course with the speed of the wind, the ‘runners-up’ always getting well beyond the winning-point before the dogs overtake them, in order that the latter may pass it at their utmost pace. It is altogether a remarkable sight, and had I never seen the thing, I could not have believed that the little dogs would enter into the contest with the ardour they do.” [6] My quotations are from Mr. A. B. Bullock’s translation of “The Basis of Morality,” see pp. 170, 208, 218. SPORT AND AGRICULTURE BY EDWARD CARPENTER It has frequently been pointed out that the enthusiasm for “sport” is the relic of a very primitive instinct in man. In that sense it is quite natural. In early days the sheer necessity of pursuing and killing animals for food, or of hunting down and destroying beasts of prey, must have become very deeply ingrained; and the satisfaction of that need became an instinctive pleasure, so much so that oftentimes nowadays the pleasure remains, though the need has long disappeared.