is and must be established on the death throes of in- 
numerable living creatures. As we seem to search in 
vain for pity among the masses of human rulers of the 
world, so he asks us to look no less hopelessly for it 
among the animals themselves; to wrestle with the 
truth that the hawk devours the dove, the dove the 
insect, and the insect the plant ; that the blood-letting 
mink kills more than he can eat ; that household cats 
rend nestling birds, and red squirrels destroy nests, 
birds, and eggs as if for malicious fun. Confronted 
with a problem almost too painful to approach, let the 
searcher admit that he hesitates, not knowing where to 
turn or how far to go. But he finds no safe consola- 
tion in the thought that he is no more cruel than the 
brutes to whom he would show mercy. 
Ahead of all his fellow-creatures in the bloody 
struggle, where it has been said the fittest only survive, 
how long shall man hold fast to the grosser habits of 
the conflict? At an immense advantage over the 
weaker children of earth and air, he turns upon them 
as cows turn upon a wounded cow, as wolves devour a 
sick wolf, as birds peck a wounded bird to death. He 
invents new apparatus, irresistible engines for sport, 
vanity, experiment, and amusement, until as a civil- 
ized Christian at the end of the nineteenth century he 
makes more blood and pain than as an ape he ever 
dreamed of. These are but idly framed sentences, 
to those who only think. But to those who feel, they 
are torture. What and where is pity for those who 
cannot plead their cause, whom we protect by laws 
generally to eat, or in order to witness their death 
struggles for sport ; and who, in “ our unceasing spite,” 
as Ouida says (. Nineteenth Century , August, 1896), 
“ find an enemy more cruel than any with which man 
has to contend ? ” 
“ What sense of kinship,” continues the writer, “ have 
we with the winged children of the air, with the four- 
footed dwellers beside us on the earth ? Almost the 
only recognition we give them is maltreatment. At 
other times the indifference of our unspeakable fatuity 
rises in a dust cloud between us and them. Of 
gratitude for their companionship, their aid, their 
patience, their many virtues, there is not a trace in 
those who use them and abuse them, no more than 
