THE NATURALIST DEVELOPING. 59 



to win it as a reward, and then grasping the bright new 

 weapon, in truculent rage, slew, with my first shot, the 

 audacious intruder, as it fluttered in triumph above the house 

 it had usurped. 



What a strange sensation it was as I lifted that first 

 gasping victim of my prowess, and saw the blood upon my 

 hands. 



I believe that blood, warm, dropping blood, maddens our 

 race, and makes fiends of us, for any devil of them all might 

 have envied my ferocious exultation ! It was my first taste 

 of blood, shed by my own act, and the red, infernal nectar 

 fired through my veins the raging ecstacies of a new lust that 

 all incarnadined the blue, holy sky, and dimmed, angrily, the 

 green, cheerful earth ! From that moment the fiercer impulse 

 of the hunter was aroused, to grow apace towards its stern 

 joys ! 



The tyrant king bird knew me for a foe, and would ruffle 

 his vermilion crest at the very sight of me, and dip at my 

 head with waspish, querulous twitterings, for now there was 

 mortal feud between us; and when I saw the quarrelsome 

 braggart persecute, with cruel buffetings, such blithe embody- 

 ments of musical mirth as the little Parson Oriole, and wag- 

 ging Wren, my heart would be moved to deadly indignation on 

 behalf of my gentle playmates ; but when the warrior-bird 

 screamed its game defiance as it fell before my aim, and 

 pecked and clawed at me to the last gasp, then my respect 

 was aroused, and I stood over it, sorrowing for my hasty 

 wrath. 



But such compunctious visitings would become less and 

 less frequent with each new deed of bloody retribution ! as 

 I fain would call it now. In my puisance I assumed to be 

 the champion of weakness and the oppressed, out in this free 

 world of nature; and going forth slaying, and to slay, its 

 tyrants, I loved to call by self-approving names this lust for 

 slaughter that grew upon me. 



