358 THE BIRD WATCHER 
world, which, uporhe whole, are better than our 
ways. 
There is a very fine line, as it seems to me, between 
thinking it wrong that a snake in confinement should 
eat in the way that nature has instructed it to, and 
wishing to exterminate snakes and various other wild 
animals, because of the way they have of dining. I 
may well think so, for the line, to my knowledge, has 
been overstepped, and here, in these remote islands, 
there are alarming indications of a campaign to be 
waged—with no other reason than this—against 
various poor birds, who are under the same necessity 
as was Caliban, of eating their dinners.’ Some, for 
instance—and they advocate their views in the local 
papers—wish the gulls to be shot down, on account of 
the kittiwakes, whilst others would seek vengeance on 
the skuas for the way in which they persecute the 
gulls. It seems wonderful that such grotesque views 
should be held by educated people, but they seem to 
me to be the same in principle with those which 
would deny to snakes, in captivity, the natural use of 
their bodily structure. For myself, I only believe in 
such a Zoological Gardens as I have tried to sketch,” 
and hope I have foreshadowed. But if the rational 
study of the habits and life history of the creatures 
confined there be not the raison d’étre of its existence, 
I, at any rate, can admit no other, and I would as 
soon think of training spiders not to make webs, as of 
1 Caxipan : I must eat my dinner.—Tempest, Act i., Scene 2. 
2 The Old Zoo and the New. 
