In Miami

Since he invented it in 1919, a Californian named Owen P. Smith and his heirs have made more than $2,000,000 out of the mechanical rabbit. There are now 30 greyhound racetracks functioning in the U. S., eight of which are in Florida where 1,000,000 people watch the races during the 90-day season. Miami, where there are more people who do not know what to do with themselves than anywhere else in the U. S., is now the U. S. greyhound-racing capital. Two thousand dogs are quartered there every winter. Filling stations give out free tickets to the races. Improving the breed, ostensible purpose of the sport, costs visitors nearly half a million dollars every year in State taxes on their bets.

Last week the Florida dog-racing season reached its peak. At the Biscayne Kennel Club, where Vincent Lopez' orchestra plays and Helen Morgan sings, a skinny, long-backed hound named Crafty Boy won the Florida Derby, most important greyhound race. At the West Flagler track a brindle puppy named George Elfrink won the season's major juvenile race, the $2,000 Nursery Stakes.

In England, greyhound raising is fashionable. In the U. S. it is practiced principally by Midwestern Indians, who have time and space to train their dogs. More interesting to breeders than last week's races is the National Coursing meet run semiannually at Abilene, Kans. for the purpose of testing speed and stamina. Short-lived, delicate, savage as wolves, greyhounds wear muzzles when they run to prevent them from biting each other to death. Extracting the live hare, traditional coursing quarry, does not decrease the cruelty of the sport. Greyhounds are taught to pursue mechanical rabbits by developing a thirst for the blood of real ones.

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