STRUGGLE IN NATURE 7 



forgotten when we are considering our relation to animals. Nature is 

 cruel and heartless, and to die to become food of another organism is the 

 fate of the vast majority of animals. Mr. Roosevelt has said : 



Watching the game, one was struck by the intensity and evanescence of 

 their emotions. Civilized man now usually passes his life under conditions 

 which eliminate the intensity of terror felt by his ancestors when death by 

 violence was their normal end, and threatened them during every hour of the 

 day and night. It is only in nightmares that the average dweller in civilized 

 countries now undergoes the hideous horror which was the regular and frequent 

 portion of his ages-vanished forefathers, and which is still an everyday incident 

 in the lives of most wild creatures. But the dread is short-lived, and its 

 horror vanishes with instantaneous rapidity. In these wilds the game dreaded 

 the lion and the other flesh-eating beasts rather than man. We saw innumer- 

 able kills of all the buck and of zebra, the neck usually being dislocated, it 

 being evident that none of the lion's victims, not even the truculent wildebeeste 

 or huge eland, had been able to make any fight against him. The game is 

 ever on the alert against this greatest of foes, and every herd, almost every 

 individual, is in imminent and deadly peril every few days or nights, and of 

 course suffers in addition from countless false alarms. But no sooner is the 

 danger over than the animals resume their feeding, or love-making, or their 

 fighting among themselves. Two bucks will do battle the minute the herd has 

 stopped running from the foe that has seized one of its number, and a buck 

 resumes his love-making with ardor, in the brief interval between the first and 

 second alarm from hunter or lion. Zebras will make much noise when one of 

 their number has been killed; but their fright has vanished when once they 

 begin their barking calls. 



Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation — these are the 

 normal endings of the stately and beautiful creatures of the wilderness. The 

 sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its 

 utter mercilessness; although all they would have to do would be to look at 

 the birds in the winter woods, or even at the insects on a cold morning or cold 

 evening. Life is hard and cruel for all the lower creatures, and for man also 

 in what the sentimentalists call a "state of nature." The savage of today 

 shows us what the fancied age of gold of our ancestors was really like; it was 

 an age when hunger, cold, violence, and iron cruelty were the ordinary accom- 

 paniments of life. If Matthew Arnold, when he expressed the wish to know 

 the thoughts of earth's "vigorous, primitive" tribes of the past, had really 

 desired an answer to his question, he would have done well to visit the homes of 

 the existing representatives of his "vigorous, primitive" ancestors, and to 

 watch them feasting on blood and guts; while as for the "pellucid and pure" 

 feelings of his imaginary primitive maiden, they were those of any meek, cow- 

 like creature who accepted marriage by purchase or of convenience, as a matter 

 of course. — From African Game Trails, by Theodore Roosevelt; Copyright, 

 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons (3). 



