334 THE BIRD WATCHER 
“ Othello’s occupatig@” be not yet “gone,” yet from 
that moment he can no longer “go to ’t” with that 
entire lightheartedness, that “ in unreproved pleasures 
free” feeling, which hitherto he has done. A little 
leaven of uneasiness will mingle with what was once 
an unalloyed delight, it will grow and grow, until, at 
last, with some men, first the pleasure in the thing, 
and then the thing itself will cease. With others the 
instinct will remain too strong, but, even with them, 
something will have been done, since no thought, if 
only we could trace it out, is ever thought in vain. It 
occurred, no doubt, one day, to some Roman sitting in 
the colosseum, that what he was witnessing was not 
quite a right state of things. He continued all his 
life to witness it ; but if the who/e progress of that age 
could be laid before us, that thought would have its 
place. 
I have said that both reason and humanity rebel 
at the unnecessary killing of wild animals. For the 
humanity, that is self-evident—to torture is not 
humane : and for the reason, when one comes to think 
of it a little, how absolutely silly it is! It is destruc- 
tion, the child’s pleasure, the unmaking of what one 
could not possibly make, smashing, breaking up, 
dashing to pieces, vandalism applied to the living 
works of nature, leading to their eternal perishing, 
with a hideous void in their stead. Something was 
alive, interesting, beautiful: you make it dead, un- 
interesting, ugly—at least, by comparison. And yet 
the hunting instinct—the heritage from countless 
