IN A GABBEN. 
167 
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. Doubtless it will come, unless some- 
thing happens ; but, doubtless, it will not continue. 
It will still be necessary for a man to kill some- 
thing in order to be happy; and the sportsmen of 
that time, like great Gambetta in the past, will sit 
in their 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 aff'ord good sport if hunted a la 
Domitian, with fine, needle- tipped paper javelins, 
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 amoeba — that " wander- 
