driving the wolves before them. The excitement
of such a wolf-rout, constantly increasing to the end, can well be
imagined. The wolves were not always killed outright. Josselyn tells
that the inhuman sport of wolf-baiting was popular in New England, and
he describes it thus: "A great mastiff held the Wolf.... Tying him to a
stake we bated him with smaller doggs and had excellent sport, but his
hinder legg being broken we soon knocked his brains out." Wolves also
were dragged alive at a horse's tail, a sport equally cruel to both
animals. These fierce and barbarous traits had been nourished in England
by the many bear and bull baitings, and even horse-baitings, and the
colonists but carried out here their English training. Wood wrote in his
"New England's Prospects:" "No ducking ponds can afford more sport than
a lame cormorant and two or three lusty doggs." Though we do not hear of
cock-fights, I doubt not the wealthy and sportsmanlike Narragansett
planters, who resembled in habits and occupations the Virginian
planters, had many a cock-fight, as they had horse-races.

Bears were "hunted with doggs; they take to a tree where they shoot
them." Nothing was "more sportfull than bearbayting." Killing foxes was
also the "best sport in depth of winter." On a moonlight night the
hunters placed a sledge-load of codfish heads on the bright side of a
fence or wall, and hiding in the shadow "as long as the moon shineth"
could sometimes kill ten of the wary creatures in a night. Squirrel
hunts were also prime sport.

Shooting at a mark or at prizes became a popular form of amusement. We
read in the _Boston Evening Post_ of January 11, 1773: "This is to give
Notice That there will be a Bear and a Number of Turkeys set up as a
Mark next Thursday Beforenoon at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline."

The "Sports of the Inn yards" found few participants in New England. In
1692 the Andover innkeeper was ordered not to allow the playing of
"Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggits, Bowles, Ninepins or any other
Unlawful Game in his house yard Garden or Backside after Saturday P.M."
Henry Cabot Lodge says the shovelboard of Shakespeare's time was almost
the only game not expressly prohibited. A Puritan minister, Rev. Peter
Thatcher, of Milton, bought in 1679 a "pack of ninepins and bowle," for
which he paid five shillings and sixpence, and enjoyed playing with them
too; but I fancy few ministers played either that or like games. On the
second