Your picture, Head to head in the bull ring (Oxford Mail, July 11), captures one of the most depressing spectacles of human depravity since the bad old days of the hunters posing over the ragged remains of a fox after a gruelling ("thrilling") chase lasting as long as the hunt masters and their servants could contrive.

Equally depressing is the knowledge that many of those thousands of visitors apparently attracted to the nine days of revelry - morning bull ring and afternoon bullfights - would include our own countrymen and women, the same ghoulish spectators who relished witnessing the gruesome death of a hunted animal, no doubt.

What, after all the thousands of years of presumed progress, is wrong with humanity?

Lack of religion? Hardly, for our spiritual leaders show precious little compassion towards the non-human species on our planet.

Although professing to believe that a compassionate God created this world and all that is on it, humans may with impunity use, or misuse, its creatures for their profit and amusement.

The Oxford Mail was right to publish the photograph.

The despicable exploitation of animals for sport needs to be seen for what it truly is - a sorry spectacle of human degradation.

BEA BRADLEY Cuxham Road Watlington