CRUELTY IN NAPLES.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5169, 11 August 1885, Page 3

CRUELTY IN NAPLES.

"Ouida," the well known noTelist, writes to the Times as follows.—Your correspondent from Naples says with perfect truth of a Neapolitan spring, " It is a Season when this lovely land is clothed in all the luxuriance of flowers; the earth is carpeted with them; walls and trees bear their light and delicioas burden, and the cast of mind prerailing in these southern regions gives a religions tone to these bountiful provisions of nature, and dedieetes them to the Church." Will you allow me, through the Times, to speak of other beautiful works of nature that are martyred in Naples with that hideous barbarity common to the city, but which your correspondent never mentions or alludes to, being unwilling, I suppose, to spoil the rose light of the pictures which he sends you? I refer to the frightful fact that all animals whose skins are worth a centime are skinned alive in this fair city of the sea. Old horses, young kids and lambs, all dogs, cats, and rats are all skinned alive, because the, skin, when removed from the living creature ia considered more supple and sells for a somewhat higher price. Dogs are seized by legalised municipal drg-stealers twice a day; are thrust pellmell into a court: kept two days without food, and then half stunned with a stick, and while living flayed from head to tail. Horses in the knackers' yards there are allowed to drop from hunger as being less trouble than killing them, and when utterly exhausted are nailed on planks and flayed. The Camora is so strong which protects all these wretches that no one dares move against them ; while in the matter of the dogs, the" municipal authorities are the first offenders, and wholly without excuse. At a moment when Italy is invited into Africa as a " civilising Power." I think these facts may as well be known. If anyone desires verification of them I am in commu nication with persons who can prove what I have slated above. Meanwhile I hope your correspondent will sometimes remember that there are other things in Naples besides flowers, song, and sun* shine.