34 DESTEUCTIVENESS OF MAIT. 



portance, they are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison 

 with the contingent and unsought results which have flowed from 

 them. 



The fact that, of aU organic beings, man alone is to be regarded 

 as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to 

 resist which Nature — that nature whom aU material life and aU 

 inorganic substance obey — ^is whoUy impotent, tends to prove 

 that, though hving in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is 

 of more exalted parentage, and belongs to a higher order of ex- 

 istences, than those which are born of her womb and Hve in 

 bhnd submission to her dictates. 



j There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects 

 'of prey — all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other 

 life, — but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in 

 fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of ani- 

 mals or of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the en- 

 croachments of another ; and the reproductive powers of species 

 which serve as the food of others are always proportioned to the 

 demand they are destined to supply. Man pursues his victims 

 with reckless destructiveness ; and while the sacrifice of hfe by 

 the lower animals is Hmited by the cravings of appetite, he un- 

 sparingly persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic 

 forms which he can not consume.* 



* The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the chase 

 of large mammalia and birds, for single products, attended with the entire 



(waste of enormous quantities of flesh and of other parts of the animal which 

 are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South America are slaugh- 

 tered by millions, for their hides and horns ; the buffalo of North America, for 

 his skin or his tongue ; the elephant, the walrus, and the narwhal, for their 

 tusks ; the cetacea, and some other marine animals, for their whalebone and 

 oil ; the ostrich and other large birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, 

 sheep have been killed in New England, by whole flocks, for their pelts and 

 suet alone, the flesh being thrown away ; and it is even said that the bodies of 

 the same quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. "What 

 a vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products 

 valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered I In nearly all these cases, 

 the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale destruction, and is 

 alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value as compared with what is 

 thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are not economically worth a 

 tenth part as much as the entire carcass. During the present year, large quan- 

 tities of Indian corn have been used as domestic fuel, and even for burning 



