I have worked out the geographical statistics of cattle maiming in England for forty years, from 1861 to 1900, and they are extremely interesting. In the first place it is well to know that the total number of such crimes is rapidly decreasing. In five years, from 1865 there were over a hundred cases; in five years prior to 1900 there were less than fifty. The counties, which total more than twenty cases each, are York, Sussex, Middlesex, Lincoln, Lancashire and Staffordshire. Somerset and Gloucester have nineteen cases, but Gloucester has only one case since 1882 and Somerset only six cases since 1870. Surrey has only eleven cases, and only five occur since 1870. Anglesey and Westmoreland have only one such charge each during the whole forty years. In the case of Staffordshire, in the twenty-two cases taking place from 1861 to 1900 fifteen cases had taken place since 1877, and there is never a clear five years in the period without a case. In 1903, when the Wyrley outrages took place, it seems to me that a county with this history would have been sensible to look at home for the criminal. In counties such as Somerset and Surrey, where the offence seemed then to be dying out, the same considerations would not apply. Whereas in Westmoreland or Anglesey the expectation would be that the crime was committed by a stranger. I do not think it would be wise to press these speculations too far, but at the same time I think magistrates and police might make greater use of the wonderful statistics that are collected and published by the State at such great expense and learn useful lessons from them in their daily business. Whilst we condemn the horrible savagery of such crimes it is only fair to remember that the law does not punish them for their cruelty, but only for their injury to property. Prevention of cruelty to animals is a far more modern branch of law, the beginning of which dates from 1822. When Lord Erskine moved his Bill against Cruelty to Animals in 1811, so absurdly sentimental did it seem to the assembled peers that they drowned his speech in a chorus of cat-calls and cock-crowing. It is well to remember when measuring punishment in the police courts that there are individuals and classes existing to-day that are scarcely more civilised than the lords and barons of a hundred years ago.