20 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



Our palt is as illustrious in its facts as our future can ever 

 be in its hopes. We should as much venerate that antediluvian 

 era in which oxu' giant progenitors wrestled hand to claw 

 with their brute antagonists, as this latter one, in which our 

 science, through chemistry and mechanics, has so entirely 

 quelled and fully restrained them. 



Although fanatics may regard this proposition as crude 

 and profane, it is, nevertheless, absolutely true, that begin- 

 ning with germination, every stage of development to its 

 highest point, is equally honorable and to be honored. Is 

 the flower with the sun-light on it more to be regarded than 

 the first pale leaf which struggles to the air from out the 

 gloomy foldings of the earth ? Is the great tree, bending 

 beneath the ruddy weight of fruitage, more respectable in 

 God's economy of progress, than the small dark seed from the 

 entombment of which its proud show is the resurrection ? 



Struggle, throughout all life, so far as it has been revealed 

 to us, is the law of ascension, as well as of fixed grades ; and 

 hence we justify all those rude antagonisms between man and 

 man, which a namby-pamby sentimentalism would convert 

 into the " piping times of peace." "War is a legitimate con- 

 sequence of the conditions of our race, and all the concomitants 

 of war, martial games, hunting, &c., are equally legitimate. 

 It is astonishing that the lymphatic " peace" men should leave 

 out of view the fact, that when battle and death shall cease, 

 the whole animal world must be annihilated. In the first 

 place, even the graminivorous animals live upon the destruction 

 of some forms of animal life. There is no blade of grass or 

 leaf plucked by them, upon which myriads of animalculge and 

 hundreds of insects are not destroyed — they cannot move 

 upon the surface of the earth without destroying such crea- 

 tures — every lifting of a hoof leaves crushed and writhing 

 victims in its track, and when the foot comes down, it is like 

 Behemoth raging through the thronged cities of men. The 

 law is, that animal life must be perpetuated through death 



