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type of the Evil One. The manner in which the boa, for instance, 
swallows live rabbits is sufficiently repulsive—in the case of larger 
animals, its more natural prey, it would be so much so as to cause 
English feeling to revolt. Even the manner in which the common 
English snake devours its prey, a frog for instance, seizing it by its 
hind-quarter, and gradually, by the force of the muscles of its throat, 
drawing it in, the frog shrieking and vainly struggling, is a sight so 
unpleasant that few persons can resist interfering with the opera- 
tions of nature by giving the snake a switch across the neck. Yet 
even here it can hardly be said that we have an exception to the 
law of nature which forbids unnecessary cruelty. 
The domestic cat might seem to be an exception from the 
manner in which it torments a mouse by anticipation before it 
devours it. But I think we may be warranted in assuming that 
this is a habit which the cat has learned from its contact with 
civilization ; one would think that in a state of nature the sense of 
insecurity, and the chance of its prey escaping, would restrain such 
a development. 
But nature adopts something more than a negative course in 
regard to the prevention of useless suffering. I refer to the instinct 
implanted in animals which causes them to put to a speedy death 
one of their own kind to prevent it from being exposed to lingering 
suffering. I do not know how far down in the scale this principle 
extends, but from what I am about to tell you, it would seem to 
extend even to those creatures which do not seem to us to be of 
much account. I remember when a boy, having my attention 
attracted to a number of sparrows on a tree in the garden, which 
were hopping about from bough to bough and twittering, in a state 
of intense excitement. While I was watching them, and wondering 
what they were about, they all descended to the ground, where, as 
I then saw, there lay another sparrow disabled from some causes 
and unable to move. All the other sparrows then set upon this 
one, and despatched it by repeated blows on the head with their 
beaks. 
Now we seem to have here an instance of the beneficent 
interference of nature to prevent lingering suffering. But there 
