With the Sporting League, which professed to discountenance “malpractices” in sport, yet opposed the Bill which would have prohibited rabbit-coursing and kindred pastimes, we were of course involved in controversy. We sought to bring this to a point by proposing a public discussion of the question: “What are malpractices in Sport?” But this challenge was declined, the _Sportsman_ expressing the opinion that “such piffling folly is best treated with contempt,” and the _Evening News_ that “cackling is the strong point of the faddists.” We were more successful in bringing to book some champions of aristocratic blood-sports, among them Sir Herbert Maxwell and Sir Edward Grey, who on one or two occasions appeared on neutral platforms, and seized the opportunity to eulogize their own favourite recreations, but showed little relish for the discussion which they themselves had provoked. Mr. F. G. Aflalo was another of our many antagonists in the magazines and the press; and I have a pleasant recollection of friendly encounters with him in the _Fortnightly Review_ and elsewhere. Many other apologists of blood-sports there were, of a more sentimental and unreasoning kind, and with these, too, we much enjoyed the argument, which was quite as good sport to us as their hunting or coursing was to them. Before passing from Sports to Fashions, I will speak briefly of those popular places of recreation, known euphemistically as “Zoological Gardens,” which in a civilized age would surely be execrated as among the saddest and dullest spots on the earth, being, in fact, nothing cheerier than big convict-stations, to which the ill-fated life-prisoners--“stuff,” as the keepers call them--are conveyed from many distant lands. How any rational person can find pleasure in seeing, for example, “the lions fed” (the modern version of _Christianos ad leones_) is a mystery that baffles thought. I have not been to the London “Zoo” for a good many years; but when I knew it, the incongruities of the place were so ludicrous as almost to obscure one’s sense of its barbarity: the Tiger’s den, for instance, was labelled: “Beware of pickpockets,” and the Eagle’s cage bore the inscription: “To the Refreshment Rooms”; and there, sure enough, within sight of the captive Bird of Jove moping disconsolate on his perch, was a waiter, serving out coffees or lemon-squashes, regardless of the great Raptor by whom his predecessor, Ganymede, had been carried off to be the god’s cup-bearer. Could bathos have gone further?