Letter: Hunting: our last true sport

Sir: In your leading article on field sports (11 July) you make the astonishing assertion that "only the fundamentalist mentality would fail to recognise a sliding scale of degrees of cruelty. Morally, setting a pack of dogs on a fox is worse than hooking a fish."

Yes, there is indeed a sliding scale of degrees of cruelty, and gratuitous cruelty, such as tormenting a creature that one does not want to kill (whether as a pest or as food), only to let it go so that it can be hooked again some other time, is certainly the worst.

VICTORIA SOLT DENNIS

Gillingham, Kent