INFLUENCE OF THE DEMAND FOR FOOD. 53 



While herbivorous animals are almost constantly employed 

 in eating, carnivorous animals are able to endure abstinence 

 for a great length of time, without any apparent diminution 

 of their strength: a horse or an ox would sink under the ex- 

 haustion consequent upon fasting for two or three days, 

 whereas, the wolf and the martin have been known to live 

 fifteen days without food, and a single meal will suffice them 

 for a whole week. The calls of hunger produce on each of 

 these classes of animals the most opposite effects. Herbivo- 

 rous animals are rendered weak and faint by the want of 

 food, but the tiger is roused to the full energy of his powers 

 by the cravings of appetite; his strength and courage are ne- 

 ver so great as when he is nearly famished, and he rushes 

 to the attack, reckless of consequences, and undismayed by 

 the number or force of his opponents. From the time he 

 has tasted blood, no education can soften the native ferocity 

 of his disposition: he is neither to be reclaimed by kindness, 

 nor subdued by the fear of punishment. On the other hand, 

 the elephant, subsisting upon the vegetable productions of 

 the forest, superior in size and even in strength to the tiger, 

 and armed with as powerful weapons of oflfence, which it 

 wants not the courage to employ, when necessary, is capa- 

 ble of being tamed with the greatest ease, is readily brought 

 to submit to the authority of man, and requites with afifec 

 tion the benefits he receives. 



On first contemplating this extensive destruction of ani- 

 mal life, by modes the most cruel and revolting to all our 

 feelings, we naturally recoil with horror from the sanguina- 

 ry scene; and cannot refrain from asking how all this is con- 

 sistent with the wisdom and benevolence so conspicuously 

 manifested in all other parts of the creation. The best theo- 

 logians have been obliged to confess that a difficulty does 

 here exist,* and that the only plausible solution which it ad- 

 mits of, is to consider the pain and suffering thus created, as 

 one of the necessary consequences of those general laws 



* See, in particular, Palcy's Natural Thcolog-y, chap. xxvi. 



