THE POULTRY-YARD. 291 



experience of every adult creature from the 

 very beginning of life upon the earth. For 

 thousands, and probably for millions of genera- 

 tions, the ancestors of these birds have had to 

 shift for themselves, and have known no security 

 except through their own activity and vigilance 

 from the time they were under their parents' 

 care. However carefully we may survey the 

 realm of nature, we find that ease and safety 

 are practically never secured outside man's 

 tyrannous protectorate. Life is a perpetual 

 struggle. Hunger and thirst are never far off, 

 and, in the case of most animals, scarcely a day 

 passes without its danger of a violent death. 

 The state of things which Kingsley imagines 

 in ' The Water Babies ' finds no counterpart in 

 the real world ; and he would have had con- 

 siderable difficulty in explaining the economy of 

 "Mother Carey's Peace Pool" if any inquisitive 

 young reader had asked him what the seals and 

 the polar bear lived upon ! The laws of nature 

 provide for no retirement from the worries of 

 business other than that final compulsory retire- 

 ment to which all of us are subject. 



One reason why many animals readily show 

 confidence in man may be because he is not one 



