CRUELTY TO ANIMALS IN EUROPE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 306, 5 June 1875, Page 3

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS IN EUROPE.

Judging from articles recently contributed to periodical literature, it would seem that dumb animals have a very hard time of it abroad. The Standard's correspondent in Italy, writing from Rome on March 15th, gives a dreadful account of the cruelty to which horses are subjected in the streets of the Italian capita l . He tells us that he has seen them beaten “ savagely about the head,” and when he has called a policeman’s attention to those acts of brutality, the latter has answered, “What have I to do with it? it is his horse! ” The same gent 1 email has witnessed a Roman carter, after exhausting all other means of causing suffering to the unfortunate animal entrusted to his care, “ dart at the under part of the creature’s neck in a paroxysm of fury and bite it with his teeth.” The Italian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, being unpopular among the wealthy classes, and unsupported by the laws of the country, is powerless to protect these unhappy quadrupeds. In Paris M. Hostein, writing to the Constitutionnel, points out that, at the meeting of the French Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals held on the 17th of December last year a M. Sorel called attention to the suffering inflicted on thejyoung elephant which appears in the “Tour du Monde” at the Porte St Martin Theatre. M. Sorel informed the meeting that in one part of the piece the animal had to utter a cry, and this cry was caused by acute pain. A sore, he said was purposely kept open (entretenve vive) behind one of the creature’s ears, and whenever it was necessary for the elephant to make itself heard this sore was well probed with a 'pointed stick. The president of the society promised that he would inquire into the matter, and that, if he found the statement correct, he would communicate with the manager of the theatre. At a more recent meeting of the society, when a Mdlle. Chretien asked what steps had been taken in the matter, she was informed that a letter was about to be written to the manager of the theatre, urging him to discontinue, if possible, the illtreatment complained of. This method of appealing to the feelings of the brute creation by the aid of a pointed stick and an open sore is by .no means new. ’ It is not an uncommon thing to see Arabs in the streets of Algiers quietly engaged in skinning places about the size of half-a-crown on the rumpbones or shoulder-blades of mules and donkeys. These places are also entretenve rives. A weekly journal informs us that Indian crows are great thieves, but as they are sacred birds the Hindoos dislike killing them. When they catch them, however, they take their revenge bj plucking their feathers, leaving them nothing but their wings and tails to get away with.