Book excerpt: We still kill other species for fun, food, fashion, profit, and with the hope of finding cures for - mostly self-induced - ills, but this book tells how the British have been shamed and legislated into moderating at least some of their cruelties to the brute creation; how class warfare and religious indifference to the plea of sentience have bedevilled every attempt at reform; and how habit and sentiment have changed. The book was first published in the UK in 1964.