THE BAEBAEIANS 21 



obtained were, I believe, thoroughly successful ; indeed the Animal 

 World published a selection of them, one showing the half-fledged 

 warbler clinging like grim death to the margin of the nest. 



Xow I will ask any unbiassed person whether such an exhibition 

 in any material feature differs from a cock-fight ? Here were two 

 birds set by the hand of man to struggle for life. It is true that 

 when defeated the borrowed warbler found soft falling, into the 

 naturalist's handkerchief arranged like a net under a trapeze-artist, 

 and was restored to his own nest when the show was over. But 

 (and this of course is from the humanitarian point of view !) the poor 

 little bird did not know that it was only a sham fight : it fought 

 and struggled and was in terror as truly as if failure actually meant 

 exposure and death. Of course in setting two cocks to fight the 

 interest is emotional, the motive being the excitement of the fight 

 and of backing your opinion with cash. When you set a blind 

 cuckoo to fight a half-fiedged sedge-warbler the interest is more 

 intellectual ; but from the humanitarian standpoint is it any the 

 less brutal ? I trow not. But that is not all. There remains the 

 bioscope which shall preserve the incident for the delight of children 

 at a popular lecture : not before bad little Barbarian Eton boys who 

 are born in the country and bred up among grooms, gamekeepers, 

 and other such vassals, but good little Philistines from Kensington 

 and Bayswater, who being fed up with plum-pudding and panto- 

 mimes are in the latter part of their Christmas holidays taken to 

 polytechnic lectures to improve their minds and keep them out of 

 mischief. Of course, if you really go into the matter, the ousting 

 of the sedge-warbler by the cuckoo cannot be " cruel " unless the 

 ordinary proceedings of Nature, and therefore the Author of Nature, 

 can be condemned of cruelty. This last is of course absurd,^ and the 

 habits of the young cuckoo being the work of God are good and 

 edifying to observe. But if so, then the hunting habits of dogs who 

 pursue game by scent, being also according to nature, must also 

 be edifying to observe, and there can be no brutality in the act of 



^ There are those who say that Nature is cruel and that thei'efore God cannot be 

 good. But this is drifting into too deep water. A Beagle Book is not the jilace for 

 theological discussions. 



