MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



More merciful than nature, we will put him 

 out of his pain ; though, after all, what good 

 have we done by it ? The shrike will catch 

 another to replace him. 



We talk of beautiful instincts and beautiful 

 adaptations, so I suppose we may also talk 

 of hateful ones ; and this instinct of the 

 shrike's is decidedly hateful. Yet such con- 

 duct is the rule in the world of animals : 

 each species thinks only of its own comfort 

 and pleasure ; none takes the slightest heed 

 of the pains of others. As Tennyson put 

 it long ago 



"Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can 



heal; 

 The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd 



by the shrike, 

 And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of 



plunder and prey." 



Assuredly no creature is worse in this 

 respect than our red-backed butcher-bird. 

 Yet he is a handsome wretch, for all that, 

 especially in his beautiful and delicate spring 

 plumage, when he first returns to us from 

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