IN AN OLD GARDEN 307 



This morning, while lying awake from four to 

 five o'clock, I almost hated the sparrows, they were 

 there in such multitudes, and ,so loud and persistent 

 sounded their jangling through the open window* 

 It set me thinking of the England of the future 

 of a time a hundred years hence, let us say when 

 there will remain with us only two representatives 

 of feral life the sparrow and the house-fly* Doubt- 

 less it will come, unless something happens ; but, 

 doubtless, it will not continue* It will still be neces- 

 sary for a man to kill something in order to be happy ; 

 and the sportsmen of that time, like great Gambetta, 

 in the past, will sit in the balconies, popping with 

 pea-rifles at the sparrows until not one is left to 

 twitter* Then will come the turn of the untamed 

 and untamable fly; and he will afford good sport 

 if hunted a la Domitian, with fine, needle-tipped 

 paper javelins, thrown to impale him on the wall* 



One of our savants has lately prophesied that 

 the time will come when only the microscopic 

 organisms will exist to satisfy the hunting instinct 

 in man* How these small creatures will be taken he 

 does not tell us* Perhaps the hunters will station 

 themselves round a table with a drop of preserved 

 water on its centre, made large and luminous by 

 means of a ray of magnifying light* When that time 

 comes the amoeba that " wandering Jew," as an 

 irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has called it will 



