24 THOMPSON'S PHILOSOPHY . 



transformations, and most ingenious labours, will afford ample 

 occupation and amusement for nearly every season of the 

 year, and moreover present us, if we choose, a collection of 

 cabinet paintings, in whose exhibition and contemplation 

 (always with reference to their Great Designer) we may take a 

 laudable delight. But here, ere it be declared, let us anticipate 

 the objection of some gentle reader who, numbering us with 

 those who kill Butterflies for amusement, may have already 

 pronounced ns worse than a Domitian, who killed flies 

 for the same purpose only. Now there is no subject, probably, 

 on which there has been more "straining at gnats and split- 

 ting of straws " than that of cruelty to animals as connected 

 with our own pleasures. Take for example the gentle Poet 

 of the Seasons, that most eloquent advocate of oppressed 

 animals ; yet Thompson was a fisher not an angler, mark 

 ye, but a fly-fisher. Accordingly, " the well-dissembled 11 v ' 

 he considers a harmless ruse, and bids us 



" Fix with gentle twitch the barbed hook ;" 



and then adds, beseechingly, 



" But let not on that hook the tortured worm 

 Convulsive twist in agonizing folds ! " 



forgetting the convulsions of the agonized Fis/t, with a hook 

 in its lacerated jaws, and gasping for its native element. 



And now, as a collector of Insect specimens, though that, 

 save for a temporary purpose, is not our profession, let us 

 endeavour, with what dexterity we may, to split our own 



