BASTARD SPORT.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1916, Page 6

BASTARD SPORT.

To the Editor, Sir.—What a pity it is Hint discissions in this local papers cannot bo carried on without personal abuse! I attacked vigorously a certain so-called sport to which 1 applied the adjectives "spurious," and "bastard." and I am personally attacked in return, and as a rule anonymously. To anonymous attack? 1 do not reply, but Mr.' Wiltlman signs his name, and I ask you to allow me to answer him briefly. ' As regards the phrase "patriotic purposes," as applied to the Gun Club's shoot, I said in my letter that "correspondents wimltt correct me if I were wrong," which they might have done without temper ami abuse. My own adjectives in describing not the shooters but the spirit itself were deliberately chosen, and really to be lectured about my language by members of the .Stratford Gun I'lub is distinctly amusing. I wonder what their idea of a clergyman is; a sort of "private secretary" individual, I should imagine. I used a clean, sound, strong adjective, which, in my opinion, exactly describes the sport in question, for how can the killing and maiming of half-tame pigeons turned out of a trap be worthy of the .description—genuine sport? I must also correct Mr. Wildmtin as to Hurlingham. It is true that the pigeon-shooting club was transferred, but the reason was that the Hurlingham committee found public opinion so strongly against it that they refused to have it in their grounds any longer. I was in London at the time, and many of my friends were freijuenters of Hurlingham grounds, and would watcli the polo with interest. Every few minutes some wounded "bird would come from the shooting enclosure and fall fluttering and bleeding to the ground among the seats of those watch, ing the polo. Was it wonderful that an educated public opinion refused to tolerate such a "sport," In conclusion, let ine say that though I wrote in the first place not as a clergyman but as an ordinary citizens, and (1. hope), a decent sportsman, yet that clergyman is a poor creature who confines his cilorts to the pulpit. His duty is to speak strongly against everything that tends to debase the life of the healthy community in which he lives, and while I am in this neighbourhood 1 shall speak strongly and emphatically against such spurious and bastard sport as the shooting of. trapped pigeons, and the coursing of hares >« enclosures,—l am, etc.. A. H. COLVILE. Kew Plymouth, August 29, 1010.