72 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



face with that hateful hoard, a butcher-bird's 

 larder. 



For what the cat does with the mouse for a 

 few short moments, that the butcher-bird does 

 with it through long lingering days and nights 

 of agony. He impales his mouse alive on the 

 stout thorn of some may-bush, and keeps it there, 

 maimed but struggling, or slowly dying, for a 

 week at a time, until he has need for it as food 

 for himself or his family. 



A clever artist devised a cover for one of our 

 popular scientific papers many years ago, which 

 enforces well the universality of this ceaseless 

 struggle of kind against kind, each wholly regard- 

 less of the other's feelings. In the centre fore- 

 ground, a fly flits airily over the surface of a 

 river, searching for its mate in the full joy of 

 existence. Beneath, a small fish jumps up at the 

 fly, and seems in the very act of seizing and 

 swallowing it. Behind and below, however, a 

 pike lies grimly in wait for the small fish with 

 open mouth ; but he is anticipated by a king- 

 fisher, which snatches it from his jaws before 

 they can close over it. In the background above, 

 a hawk poises itself on even wings, ready to 

 swoop down in triumph at last on the successful 

 kingfisher. There you have the epic of animal 

 life in brief ; you have only to throw in an 

 angler on the bank, fishing for the pike with a 

 live-bait of minnow, and an enthusiastic ornitho- 

 logist pointing his fowling-piece at the rare species 

 of hawk, in order to complete the whole cycle 



