3(J SEALS OF THE SHETLAND ISLANDS. 



seen. The legal doctrine of Ferae Naturae seems, there- 

 fore, peculiar to advanced, rather than to early, stages of 

 society, and an authority for man -traps and tomahawks 

 may be traced up to the hunter state, when to the death 

 the Indian maintained his Prairies * against the poachers of 

 those palmy days, and the Viking his Hellyers. If it be 

 natural to poach, it is natural to preserve. The moment 

 the poacher becomes proprietor, he is as virulent in invec- 

 tive and bold in defence as he was before in attack ; and the 

 question of the natural equity of game-laws will, I suspect, 

 at length resolve itself into this, — that he who has not wishes 

 to take from him who has, and he who has wishes to main- 

 tain his position ; and that the right to the denizens of the 

 ocean and forest may rest on as valid a basis as any other 

 species of appropriation. So also seem to have thought the 

 ancient Scandinavian sages of the long robe, and their de- 

 cisions are of no trifling importance ; for their codes of juris- 

 prudence, which have survived the so-called darkness of 

 the Middle Ages, present a subtle or enlightened legislation, 

 which can stand a comparison with the celebrated civil com- 

 pilations of Justinian. Too much praise cannot be bestowed 

 on the efforts of the northern antiquaries, especially the 

 Danish, to extend and elucidate the knowledge to us so in- 

 teresting and useful, of the ancient laws and history of the 



* The theory that long since occurred to me of the origin of these 

 illimitable meadows of the New World is, that they were the arable 

 grounds of an ancient, numerous, and civilized people. Suggestions 

 for this view will readily present themselves. The enormous tumuli or 

 pyramids on them, emulous of those of Egypt — the remains of human 

 bones, pottery, &c, which they contain, indicate a populous region ; and 

 agriculture in an extensive and advanced condition, must, in such a 

 stage of society, have been necessary. But where else than those 

 prairies were the fields for their agriculture ? They exhibit all the ap- 

 pearances of long and careful cultivation, and one of these is the almost 

 total absence of wood on them. 



