i io SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Evi 



The Limitation of Evil. 



The raptores, or birds of prey, live only by rapine, and are 

 naturally plunderers and bloodthirsty. Like the carnivora 

 among mammalia, they live on animals either dead or living ; 

 like them too they possess the strength and adroitness which 

 are necessary to satisfy their sanguinary appetites. They enjoy 

 no power of song. Destruction seems the sole object of their 

 existence. Nocturnal and diurnal, they are the terror of all 

 the rest of the feathered creation, amongst whom, they make 

 numerous victims. They are cruelly despotic, and reign as 

 lords and masters in the districts which they choose for their 

 territory. But Nature puts a limit to evil, physical as well as 

 moral. And so, with her ever-admirable foresight, she has 

 wisely limited the reproduction of these destructive and cruel 

 creatures. The largest of them only lays two eggs a ye#r ; the 

 others on an average five or six. What a horrible thing it 

 would be if they possessed the fecundity of the domestic fowl ! 

 A few specimens of evil are quite enough, and so Nature pro- 

 vides that there shall only be a few. Caligulas, Neros, Buona- 

 partes, and all that class of creatures the human raptores are 

 also beneficently kept within limits as to numbers. RE. 



Evil in Unexpected Places. 



Evil is not limited to any locality or set of circumstances. 

 Men sometimes think that if they could get away from the 

 din and jargon of the city, and the tricks and snares of the 

 market, they could discover some quiet, sacred glen, or lovely 

 peaceful retreat, where baseness and depravity could not enter. 

 Never was there a greater error. Of old the serpent found his 

 way into even paradise. Commerce and religion are two 

 mighty streams whose civilising influences are felt all the world 

 over ; yet even in closest contiguity to their influences what 

 horrible forms of evil and grotesque shapes of barbarity are 

 discernible ! The physical world suffers like the moral world 

 from the intrusion, into its most beautiful associations, of in- 

 congruous and detestable forms. Look at those two magnificent 

 rivers the Orinoco and Amazon. Behold the forests which 



