THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



15 



form of a book, which would be the 

 tiest scrap-book anyone could have, 

 -ery nice and appropriate way of 

 nting them is in the form of a wreath 

 .nd a funeral card. Black paper 

 ng a dead surface should always be 

 . for mounting them upon, and in 

 ming the specimens on, great care 

 \,ild be taken not to smear the paper 

 1 gum, which should be a mixture of 

 stragacanthand arabic in water. Many 

 es are yet obtainable, both out of 

 s, and in greenhouses, and we hope 

 e of our young friends will try this, 

 i make some beautiful christmas 

 Uients for their brother and sister 

 cnaintances. 



CRUELTY. 



CHARGE is made against us that, in en- 

 I aging young people to form collections of 

 J cts in Natural History, we teach them to be 

 1, and wantonly to destroy the life they cannot 

 Lads are often cruel enough naturally, and 

 r^e act as though animal life was only given for 

 to destroy, and, if they can capture a living 

 g of any sort, they are justified in having as 

 h " fun " out of it as they can get. To capture 

 blue-bottle," and divest it of wings, legs, and 

 l head ; to tie a string round the tail of a 

 ise, and watch its futile efforts to run away ; 

 ob a nest of its young, and place them on the 

 fjmd, at a few yards distance, to be pelted with 

 <s or stones till all are dead : — amusements 

 these may be cruel, and certainly have a 

 alising tendency. Naturalists, on the other 

 from watching the habits of animals, learn 

 think of them as having feelings and passions 

 ed, in some degree to their own. No naturalist 

 wantonly destroy life, torment a living 

 mal, nor inflict a serious wound and then leave 

 poor thing to die in agony. It must be re- 

 mbered, however, that all animals are not 

 lowed with similar susceptibility to pain. Those 

 est in the scale seem to feel least, and it is 

 -Jnderful how some can resist it. The Crab may 

 J;e one of its limbs torn forcibly from its socket, 



an operation that would be certain death to the 

 strongest man, and to most superior animals, yet 

 the crab will crawl away, little, if any, the worse 

 for what has happened, and commence to grow a 

 new limb as speedily as may be. I have seen a 

 moth, at rest on a tree trunk, so dexterously im- 

 paled with a sharp pin, that it evidently was not 

 conscious of what had been done. Not that we 

 would assume either that crabs claws may be torn 

 off, or living insects impaled, without the per. 

 petrator being open to a charge of cruelty, but it 

 is as well to know that the lower animals do not 

 suffer bodily pain in a like degree with ourselves. 



If a youth goes out with a gun, shoots at every 

 bird he meets, leaves some wounded, to linger out 

 a few hours in agony, or perhaps throws them up 

 into the air to be fired at again, and leaves at last a 

 mere mass of bloody feathers — that youth, we say, 

 is cruel. If, on the other hand, he wanders along 

 gun in hand, noting the habits of each little 

 songster as he passes them, and at last, when he 

 meets with one he wants for his collection, he 

 shoots it, and, if by chance he wounds it only, he 

 carefully and quickly puts it out of its pain, and 

 takes it home to skin and preserve. Though in 

 this case too, life has been taken, yet there has 

 been no wanton cruelty in the act. The same 

 with bird nesting : the first would rob a nest only 

 to destroy the eggs, pulling the nest to pieces at 

 the same time. The second, if he did not want 

 the eggs, would notice carefully the construction 

 of the nest and its adaptation to the end desired ; 

 if he wanted eggs of the species, he would perhaps 

 take one, which the bird would never miss. 



So in insect collecting. No entomologist takes 

 every insect he comes across, merely for the sake 

 of ending its life. The experienced collector, 

 who knows most of the species even on the wing, 

 only captures those he wants, and kills them in the 

 most painless way. In rearing larvae, he takes in- 

 finite trouble that they are well supplied with 

 suitable food, and a proper place to go through 

 their change. He carefully protects them from 

 their many enemies, from birds, ichneumons, &c, 

 and, if when they arrive at the perfect state, he 

 kills them for preservation, he has but shortened 

 their lives a few days. In rearing a brood of larvae 

 from the egg, the experienced entomologist will 

 often bring three-fourths of them, or even more, to 

 maturity. In nature, no such proportion can ever 

 survive, and, in such a case, he has added to their 

 average life, rather than the reverse. But this is 



