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 ii la Domitian, with fine, needle-tipped 

 paper javeUns, 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 amceba — that " wandering Jew," as an 

 irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has called it — ^will 



