/>’ ROCKWELL PUBLIC PARK 
165 
infringement of tlie rights of fellow-citizens, inasmuch as we all have a right to 
the enjoyment of the beautiful things of nature, and save under special circum- 
stances no one has the moral right to deprive us of them, whatever licence the 
law may allow him. I believe that people in England and America are becoming 
less cruel, less barbarous and heartless than they were. That seems certain, and 
there is comfort in the reflection. But there is much, much work yet to be done 
in the way of refining and civilising before educated men and women shall one 
and all instinctively regard with abhorrence the wanton destruction of beautiful 
life of any kind. But that is the ideal which the Selborne Society is nobly 
striving to realise. . . . As for Mr. Seton- Karr’s ‘ God-planted instincts of 
the chase,’ I would suggest the correct amended formula would read ‘ Devil- 
planted instincts of destruction.’ . . 
We should be reluctant to adopt our correspondent’s some- 
what Manichaean explanation of the instincts of the chase, and 
should personally prefer the Darwinian explanation delightfully 
put forward by Dr. Louis Robinson in the opening pages of his 
“ Wild Traits in Tame Animals,” in which he shows how our 
primitive ancestors depended on the cultivation of these very 
animal instincts for their daily safety and provender ; but surely 
we have left this stage of being behind us. As students of 
nature we should remember what Darwin has himself recorded 
as to his abandonment of shooting, of which he had been 
passionately fond. “ I discovered,” he writes, “ though uncon- 
sciously and insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and. 
reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport.” 
We should hope that some may feel repulsion not only at Mr. 
Seton-Karr’s tethering a donkey as live-bait for lions, but even 
at Izaak Walton’s advice as to how to use a frog “ as though 
you loved him ” ; and that we may all 
“ Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die.” 
BROCKWELL PUBLIC PARK (HERNE HILL). 
How strange that never on the mountain top. 
Or in the stillness of the untrodden moor, 
Or where the sad, invariable sea 
Endlessly beats upon a desolate shore, 
Have I felt Nature’s heart so close as here 
Beneath this old wych elm in Brockwell Park ! 
Its graceful boughs are dark and tremulous 
Against the evening sky, and photographed 
Upon the greensward by the setting sun. 
Its giant form is nebulously cast, 
Dappling the browsing sheep, and spreading far 
Adown the grassy slopes, but cannot reach 
The gleaming pool beyond, or dim the hues 
Of the gay folk who saunter by its marge, 
And move about among th’ ancestral oaks. 
There lies the old wall’d garden — do you know 
A brighter or a sweeter ? As in days of old 
The dial still records the fleeting hour, 
