EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 159 



after death it should minister to the nourishment of his pack of hounds 

 is, on the whole, no inappropriate, or even unworthy, conclusion of his 

 career. As for the moral qualities discoverable in brutes, it is said 

 they have been overrated. There is no touch in these with what is 

 spiritual, divine, eternal. Conscience in brutes amounts to little or 

 nothing more than a fear of punishment, or the hope of sensual 

 gratification. 



" Decision in such a controversy is by no means easy. The problem 

 is akin to that of the probable future of idiots or humans who die in 

 infancy. May there not be degrees in 'immortality,' or may re- 

 incarnation be true for the brute ? May there not be a generic resur- 

 rection in which what is durable in the individual shall be perpetuated 

 only in the mass ? It is beyond us to find the answer to these 

 questions. At all events, we cannot consent to infer the immortality 

 of brutes from the absence of essential distinctions between their 

 nature and our own. The line of demarcation may not seem easy to 

 draw in regard to their mental and moral qualities ; but may we not 

 draw it at the border between soul and spirit ? " 



It was stated at yesterday's meeting of the Yarmouth Harbour 

 Commissioners that, though the Herring fleet represented a capital 

 outlay of a quarter of a million sterling, exclusive of nets and gear that 

 may be estimated at another £50,000, the boats' accounts for the past 

 year did not show a return of much more than 1 per cent, upon the 

 capital. Yet at Yarmouth last year there were landed no less than 

 40,599 lasts, or 535,378,800 Herrings, sufficient to provide every man, 

 woman, and child in the United Kingdom with about a score of 

 Herrings each. — Evening Standard, March 11th. 



The preservation of birds from a gardener's point of view is clearly 

 expressed by a writer in ' The Garden ' (April 8th), and may be read 

 with interest by many who may disagree with the writer's conclusions. 

 He considers that there is " little escape from the conclusion that the 

 fewer Bullfinches we have in the country the better, and that people 

 who kill seventy or eighty Bullfinches in a winter, as some gardeners 

 do in the south-west, are justified in congratulating themselves upon 

 the performance. The wonder is that there is not such a market for 

 live Bullfinches as should make the shooting of them seem not only 

 unnecessary but wasteful. The bird is very easily trapped, and makes 

 an ideal cage bird. The general question of birds in gardens is full of 

 difficulties, which will become more serious year by year as the birds 



