THE "AUTOBIOGRAPHY" OF GEORGE COMBE. 117 



But his out-of-school education all this time went on apace. The 

 narrative continues : 



I always had an active life and pursuits out of school, when any leisure was 

 left me. We had ample play-ground near my father's brewery. My brother 

 Abram was only a few years older than I. He was very clever at all boyish 

 games, tricks, and small mischiefs ; full of fun ; a builder of rabbit-houses, and 

 keeper of rabbits ; passionately addicted to brass cannons and pistols, and the 

 use of gunpowder in all its forms ; and I followed him, a willing pupil. There 

 were a number of boys, sons of workingmen, living in the neighborhood, who 

 formed our companions in play ; but no boys of the genteeler classes were with- 

 in our reach, the brewery lying close to Westport and Grassmarket, and far 

 from the new town. I too built a rabbit-house, and bought a pair of rabbits, 

 which soon had a numerous progeny. The procuring food for them and clean- 

 ing their house were occupations, and the warm attachment I felt toward them 

 was a source of great gratification. On two occasions, however, I grossly mis- 

 managed them one culpably, the other through kindness ill-directed, but both 

 leading to results from which I subsequently drew instruction. The first fault 

 was neglecting to clean their habitation. Under the pressure of other duties I 

 neglected this one, and merely covered over the old litter with fresh straw. In 

 the course of time the female killed her young, and the buck was savage. This 

 infanticide occurred again and again, and, true to the spirit of the age, I held up 

 the slaughtered young before the mother's eyes and beat her well, but did not 

 clean her bed. At last, when I resumed the discharge of my own duty, her ab- 

 erration ceased ; but at that time I saw no connection between my own miscon- 

 duct and hers. Many years later the study of physiology revealed to me my 

 sin, and carried instruction with it. The organism of the animal was injured 

 and rendered miserable by the dirt, and nervous irritability, akin to insanity, 

 was the result. This example I subsequently applied to the case of the human 

 poor, and saw in the deleterious physical condition in which many of them ha- 

 bitually live the cause of some of their sufferings and crimes. 



In the other instance, my compassion was moved by the supposed sufferings 

 of my pets from intensely cold weather ; and I obtained leave from my father to 

 transfer them from the house I had built for them, with the earth for their floor, 

 to a loft having a deal floor and thoroughly inclosed and roofed. It had only a 

 glimmer of light through panes of thick glass inserted here and there among the 

 tiles. To my great distress the rabbits grew sick, lost their hair ; their eyes be- 

 came impaired ; they lost their appetite, and the buck became so miserable that 

 I took him out to the garden, tied him to a stake, and tried my skill in marking 

 by standing at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces and shooting him with my 

 pistol loaded with a single ball. The ball broke his spine, and he uttered a 

 piercing scream. The cry struck so deep into my moral nature that it over- 

 whelmed me with pain, shame, and remorse at the time, and has never lost its 

 character in my memory since. 



Long afterward I discovered that these sufferings of my beloved rabbits 

 were the consequences of my having, through mistaken kindness, placed them 

 in circumstances at variance with their nature. The ground was their native 

 floor; their fur protected them from the cold; and abundance of air and light, 

 which they enjoyed in their habitation which I had made for them, were indis- 

 pensable to their well-being : and these were all wanting in the lofts. The in- 

 struction I drew from these occurrences was that, without knowledge of the 

 structure and functions of a living organism, and its relations to the natural ob- 



