WAYS OF NATURE 



feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and 

 cosseted that it becomes maudlin and unworthy. 

 When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless 

 cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are 

 cried down, when the animals are humanized and 

 books are written to show that the wild creatures 

 have schools and kindergartens, and that their 

 young are instructed and disciplined in quite the 

 human way by their fond parents; when we want 

 to believe that reason and not instinct guides them, 

 that they are quite up in some of the simpler arts of 

 surgery, mending or amputating their own broken 

 limbs and salving their wounds, — when, I say, our 

 attitude toward the natural life about us and our 

 feeling for it have reached the stage implied by 

 these things, then has sentiment degenerated into 

 sentimentaUsm, and our appreciation of nature lost 

 its firm edge. 



No doubt there is a considerable number of 

 people in any community that are greatly taken 

 with this improved anthropomorphic view of wild 

 nature now current among us. Such a view tickles 

 the fancy and touches the emotions. It makes the 

 wild creatures so much more interesting. Shall we 

 deny anything to a bird or beast that makes it more 

 interesting, and more worthy of our study and ad- 

 miration ? 



This sentimental view of animal life has its good 

 side and its bad side. Its good side is its result in 

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