320 THE BIRD WATCHER 
else but the birds in their thousands ; and there, on 
the insensate waver rocks, amidst spectators as in- 
different as they, one of them is slowly, methodically, 
almost fastidiously, hacking, hewing, and picking 
another to death. You see the struggles, the flights 
of escape, the horrid, remorseless re-catchings ; you 
see it proceeding and proceeding, see the wound 
growing larger and larger, the blood running redder 
and redder, and reason, with an impetuous inrush, 
says to you, suddenly, and as though for the first time, 
“This is nature—shis is your God of Love—His 
scheme, His plan!” 
And it és for the first time if you have not seen the 
same thing, or something like it, before, and even 
then, if there has been anything of an interval. You 
have got a fact at first hand, from nature herself, 
instead of through the falsifying medium of humanity 
—truth strained through benevolent minds——and the 
difference is so great that it is, I] maintain, one of 
kind, and not merely of degree. You cannot, whilst 
actually seeing these things, get that sort of comfort 
that you can and do get when only hearing or reading 
about them. Itis nature that is speaking to you, not 
a man, whose voice, be it ever so harsh, is mild and 
puny in comparison, and which, moreover, calls up, 
by association, the extenuating voices of a host of 
other men, that sea of human comfort on whose 
waves you float off and escape. No, but you are, 
and you feel, alone. You forget, almost, for the time, 
your own personality, and no thoughts of other per- 
