lyO NATURE STUDV. 



by their uses. In the Zend Avesta they are sharply divid- 

 ed into good and bad, creations of benevolent and malevo- 

 lent deities. A distinction is drawn between domestic and 

 wild animals. Only the former furnish occasion for the 

 exercise of sympathy and they but sparingly. The fierce- 

 ness of the chase, the desire to master, to kill, absorb men's 

 thoughts in relation to the creatures of the wilderness. 

 How few are the pictures of animal life in the classic writ- 

 ers ! They were simply like the slaves, of no interest what- 

 ever. 



Thus was a chasm opened, as it were, between man and 

 his neighbors. Then came the Dark Ages for all creat- 

 ures within the power of man, and these Dark Ages began 

 before the Dark Ages of Western history and stretched out 

 longer. They were ages of cruelt}- and indifference, of 

 conscious superiority and contempt. The animal was but 

 another tool for man and whom he willed he smote and 

 whom he willed he cherished. In English literature there 

 are fine descriptions from Chaucer down of the hounds at 

 hunting, of the cattle and sheep, of horses on the highway 

 and in battle, but it is all slight and superficial. These 

 are but the ornaments, the background to human exist- 

 ence. That is the way that Shakespeare treats the dumb 

 creation. And it is not till the opening of the last century 

 that another change begins. You may feel the difference 

 in Burns' lines to the F'ield Mouse, in Walter Scott's ac- 

 count of his dogs, in Scotch John Brown's fine classic, 

 ' ' Rab and His Friends. ' ' This is a new imaginative treat- 

 ment of animal life. It represents and recognizes the ani- 

 mal as an independent being, as having a psychical life of 

 its own. As childhood is a modern discovery in litera- 

 ture, so is the real life of field and forest. The highest ex- 

 ercise of the imagination is that of putting oneself in an- 

 other being's place, striving to realize that other creature's 

 view. 



