Yet again the fern above has arisen like a phoenix as it does every year, seemingly lusher and more brightly green than ever.
“Animal Wrongs” refers back to the book which kick-started my collection of books and other material relating to animal rights and I gave an account of buying it in Animal Trust:
“My wife and I had gone to Hay-on-Wye for the weekend, the world-famous book town and venue for what has become a major literary festival. An American bookdealer once said to me that we must all know our place in the food chain and certainly there are a relatively small numbers of dealers worldwide who operate from the top of the mountain, dealing in the greatest rarities, huge colour-plate books (travel and natural history), incunabula (books published before 1501), Books of Hours, Shakespeare folios and other giants. Their prices are to match – some won’t bother with a book if it isn’t worth at least five figures. In that scheme of things a jaundiced eye might perceive Hay as the place where books end up when they have nowhere else to go. Ours was a combined break and business trip, but we could find nothing whatsoever to purchase for stock. After the first day, the proliferation of shops and sheer numbers of books became, to me at least, quite oppressive, and I didn’t feel I could carry on much longer without worsening a nascent headache.
Then I saw the most innocuous looking volume, bound in dull green blindstamped cloth, shelved randomly amongst books on all sorts of other topics, lettered on the spine in slightly faded gilt “Wrongs of the Animal World”. Written by David Mushet, it was published by Hatchard and Son, of Piccadilly, in 1839. This was the first hint that books about animal rights had been being written long before I had suspected.“
My full catalogue description of the book is at the end of this post.
Sculpture
Sophie Orde-MccGwire was one of my hosts in Dorset at the weekend. Not only does she really know how to season food, she is an exceptional artist and in particular sculptor. This is her website: Sophie Orde
She has given me permission to show images of two of her works here which I think are objects of extraordinary beauty. The first is ‘Winter Sun’ which I saw at the house:
And this is ‘White Swan’:
I don’t have words to describe their elegance, power and grace.
Surds
A new word in a crossword this morning: surd. I had never heard of it and had to cheat (there are websites). The definition part is “irrational”, the word play is “absurd” minus “a” and ” b[ook)”. AI tells me that surd is “an irrational number expressed as an unresolved root which cannot be simplified into a whole number or fraction. Surds are used to provide the exact value of irrational numbers avoiding the rounding errors created by decimals.” Examples are:
∛5
Maths is fun!
Animal Wrongs
A slew of recent e-mails in the last couple of days and petitions to sign on behalf of Orcas in captivity, monkeys being used to harvest coconuts, imprisoned animals at Pata Zoo in Thailand, elephants in the tourist industry, horses in Mallorca, and civet cats in the kopi luwak (‘cat-poop’ coffee) industry.
Yet another u-turn from the Labour government, this time relating to trophy hunting, again in contradiction of their manifesto promises: there is still no set date for delivery. Meanwhile the government “has issued 28 import licenses in the last month, including for hippopotamuses, African elephants, brown and black bears as well as lions, giraffes and Nile crocodiles.”
This is from Protect the Wild who also make the case again for the re-introduction of apex predators and contraceptive measures to deal with our burgeoning deer population, rather than reaching for the rifle. They ask furthermore for the Guga Hunt to be on NatureScot’s agenda for their next meeting, which it currently is not despite intense public pressure and protest.
From Compassion in World Farming there’s a reminder that it isn’t just non-human animals who suffer from factory farming. An artist and café owner in the Wye Valley reports an overwhelming smell of ammonia from a nearby factory which made her eyes water and breathing difficult to the extent she felt unable to open her windows. As a result she has moved house twice only to find another planning application for a factory chicken farm right next door. She says:
“The dreams I had of finally owning my very own home were ruined by the constant noise, smell and traffic and the animal cruelty made me feel sick. At night the noise would wake me. I was exhausted. I started having panic attacks. I had to keep my doors and windows shut because of the smell and I became increasingly concerned about my heath and the impact of airborne particles.
I decided I couldn’t tolerate living at The Chapel any longer. To protect my sanity, I needed to get out. No one should be forced out of their own home because of pollution from cruel factory farming.”
Animal Rising highlights a campaign fronted by the wonderful Diane Morgan and Dr Amir Khan specifically against the slaughter of pigs in gas chambers. Big Ag has the money and power to hide the reality from us.
“The government’s own advisory body confirmed in 2025 that these gas chambers cause severe pain, respiratory distress, and fear. The government responded in December with a vague promise to phase it out at some point in the future.”
On factory farming,,”56% of people in the UK support an outright ban. 75 to 94% find factory farming practices unacceptable once they’re told what those practices are. And just 2% trust what the industry says about welfare. The public’s values already align with ending factory farming. The industry has just been very good at keeping the reality out of sight. But that’s changing.”
Lawyers for Animals report on a video showing unbelievable levels of animal abuse at a slaughterhouse in Greater Manchester, in spite of CCTV and the presence of a Foods Standards Agency official. They also look at the problems associated with ritual religious slaughter.
____________
Mushet (David). The Wrongs of the Animal World. To which is subjoined, The Speech of Lord Erskine, on the same subject. Hatchard and Son, 1839. Original green blindstamped cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine a little faded and marked and with a few nicks at head and foot, just a little spotting, nevertheless a very nice, fresh copy; ownership signature on title-page. Rare. Three copies only located in NUC. Magel 261.
This work and its author seem strangely to have been forgotten, overshadowed by Gompertz and Salt, probably the two most influential nineteenth-century writers on the subject (Darwin aside for the moment), although publication followed the former by only fifteen years and preceded the latter by over half a century. Mushet (1772-1847) was principally an innovative ironfounder. This work is briefly described as a denunciation of the use of dogs as draught-animals but actually Mushet considers the treatment of very many different animals by man and takes on the whole, wider issue of animal rights. The books is in three parts: “A general view of the effects of human cruelty towards the brute creation”; “The state of some animals more particularly considered” and “The practice of vivisection, conclusion”, followed by Lord Erskine’s speech delivered as long before the appearance of this book as 15 May 1809, on the second reading of the bill preventing malicious and wanton cruelty to animals.
The book was actually written in answer to an advertisement placed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, offering a premium for the best essay on “The Obligation of Man as regards the Brute Creation” but is genuinely a “labour of love and hope” and also a passionate and outraged plea.
Arguing very much from a Christian standpoint Mushet eschews the idea of not using animals for food (but reasons that those animals are at least entitled to a life of peace); he roundly condemns hunting for sport (fox-hunting of course, considering also cruelties inflicted upon the hounds, and including hare coursing and angling). The lives and treatment of coach- and post-horses are considered and the following extract concerning their deaths gives a taste of the style of the book and of the author’s unflinching desire to involve the reader emotionally:
Lord Erskine’s bill passed the lords but was lost in the commons (37 to 27) and he withdrew another bill on the same subject in the following session. He was apparently inordinately fond of animals, having many pets including a dog which he introduced at consultations, a goose and even two leeches. In 1807 he published a pamphlet An Appeal in favour of the Agricultural Services of Rooks.
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