The grey or Norwegian rat (Mus decumanus, LINN.) exemplifies well the necessity of a constant check to its increase; and it so happens that, having no friend, but numerous enemies, even in its own species, its numbers are thinned and kept within due bounds. Fothergill, in his excellent Essay on the Philosophy, Study, and Use of Natural History, reckons that "a number not far short of three millions might be produced from a single pair in the course of four years. Now," he continues, "the consequence of such an active and productive principle of increase, if suffered continually to operate without check, would soon be fatally obvious. We have heard of fertile plains being devastated, and large towns undermined in Spain by rabbits; and even that a military force from Rome was once requested of the great Augustus to suppress the astonishing numbers of the same animals which overran the islands of Majorca and Minorca: but if rats were suffered to multiply without the restraint of the most powerful and positive natural checks, not only would fertile plains and rich cities be undermined and destroyed, but the whole surface of the earth in a very few years would be rendered a barren and an hideous waste, covered with myriads of famished grey rats, against which man himself would contend in vain." pp. 138, 139. That it is among the ordinances of Providence, that one tribe of animals should prey upon another, to keep the number of each in proper bounds, is what no observer of nature will dispute. In the Amanitates Academice it is observed, that "if the species destined to prey upon any particular animal were to perish, the greatest calamities might result from it. Nature has appointed the Quiscula to watch over the Dermestes pisorum; these being extirpated in North America by shooting, the peas have been totally ruined. If all the sparrows were to be destroyed here, our plantations would be ruined by the Grylli; America, deprived of swine, would be infested with serpents to an intolerable degree; and we must believe the same with respect to the other servants of the great family of nature, since its Author has permitted nothing to be without sufficient reason." When any genus or species ceases to be reduced to the proper くく。 standard by one engine of destruction, another is employed. A murrain among beasts may effect what the jaws of the tiger and lion have failed to accomplish. "Seals have in some seasons been observed floating in incredible numbers; and their dead bodies were so thickly strewed on some parts of the North coast of Scotland and the Northern islands, that they tainted the air."-MUDIE'S Guide to the Observation of Nature. "Many analogous instances of mortality in particular tribes, for which no cause could be, or at least has been assigned, are recorded; and because nothing is known of the means by which they are produced, these mortalities are, in the case of animals, called 'Epizooty,' that is, 'On the Life,' because they as it were fall on the life itself, without any apparent derangement of the organization, or other disease of which the symptoms can be observed."* Man may be considered as one of the principal instruments designed by Providence to check the redundance of other creatures. His physical wants stimulate to the invention and the employment of those arts by which this object is effected. Some animals he must sacrifice for food-others for safety and for health. Cleanliness and comfort demand the extermination of vermin, when they come to infest us; and we must consider it not as a virtue but an act of blind and excessive superstition to found such hospitals as that of Surat, mentioned in Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, for the support not only of birds and quadrupeds, but "vermin of the most loathsome description." It was the spirit of a false philosophy that led the Emperor Julian "to celebrate his shaggy and populous beard, which he fondly cherished after the example of the philosophers of Greece." Gibbon justly observes, that "had Julian consulted the simple dictates of reason, the first magistrate of the Romans would have scorned the affectation of Diogenes, as well as that of Darius."-Decline and Fall, vol. IV. 45. Enough has now been said to prove that man is obliged by necessity to take the lives of animals. They are part of the provision on which he subsists, and which God • Lord's Popular Physiology. page created for his use, and he must take them by such arts as he finds most available; whether by the dog, the net, or the gun. "The Canonists allow fishing with rods to be a proper recreation for clergymen, but prohibit them the diversion of hunting. Yet there are doctors of great authority, on the contrary, who allow them that liberty for health, and not merely for pleasure."* But this is a distinction that is seldom if ever regarded. Few would think of either hunting or fishing for mere health, though this may be the pretext, when pleasure is the real object. It is well observed in the thirty-seventh number of the Adventurer, that "there is great difference between killing for food and for sport. To take pleasure in that by which pain is inflicted, if it is not vicious is dangerous; and every practice which, if not criminal in itself, yet wears out the sympathizing sensibilities of a tender mind, must render human nature proportionably less fit for society." It is not, however, of the legitimate acts of hunting, fishing, and shooting, as necessary to the sustenance and wellbeing of man, that the friends of humanity complain, but of a wasteful and useless expenditure of life, the destruction of animals for mere amusement, and the putting of them to death with circumstances of cruelty, whether it be to gratify an epicurean taste, or a too audacious curiosity, designated as a love of science. Against all such acts they must record their solemn protest, and against the sacrifice of any life, though it be that of a worm or a fly, if it cannot be justified by strong claims of use or necessity. There are some who go still farther, and proscribe hunting and fishing; and certainly, where they are pursued by gentlemen for mere amusement, they shall have no praise of mine. But as occupations, the latter particularly, they are necessary and therefore allowable. The Saviour did not condemn fishing as an employment. His disciples were fishermen, and he was sometimes present with them in their piscatory labours. On one occasion he said to Peter, "Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up," (Matt. * Wood's New Institute of the Imperial and Civil Law, page 103. xvii. 27,) and on another directed them where to cast the net for a miraculous draught of fishes. The gentle and more prolific animals are required for man's support; the more ferocious must be destroyed, that the weaker may not perish under their fangs. If we would preserve the fold, the wolf must be slain; if we would save the poultry, we must kill the fox. But still animals have their rights as well as men; rights that are not to be infringed or trampled down with guiltlessness or impunity. CHAPTER VI. MAN'S RIGHT TO THE USE OF ANIMALS LIMITed. "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle."-Ps. civ. 14. All charters and privileges have their limits. Though it be admitted that man has a right to the use and services of animals, he is not permitted by any just law, human or divine, to inflict upon them any pain which can be avoided, or to carry destruction among them without some imperative necessity. The same beneficent being who formed man, and gave him this beautiful world for his residence, also formed them, and allotted to them their respective habitations in the waters, the earth, and the air; some in depths where man has never penetrated, and others in elevations where he has never soared; where he can neither strike them with his trident nor reach them with his arrows; but where they live free and independent of him as he of them. He who said to our first parents, "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth" said also, "To every beast of the earth, to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth on the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.” (Gen. i. 28, 30.) Thus we find that the wants of the animal tribes were, by the bounty of God, provided for at their creation; and in other passages, par ticularly in the 104th Psalm, we read of their distribution into various localities adapted to their nature. Hence the inference is unquestionable, that they are not to be maltreated by man, nor deprived of that which a kind Providence designed for their use. An apocryphal writer says, "God ordained man through his wisdom, that he should have dominion over the creatures which he hath made, and order the world according to equity and righteousness, and execute judgment with an upright heart." Wisdom, ix. 2, 3. And once more, "Thou lovest all things that are, and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made; for never wouldest thou have made any thing if thou hadst hated it; and how could any thing have endured, if it had not been thy will ? or been preserved, if not called by thee? But thou sparest all; for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls." xi. 24. 26. The charter given to man invests him with the privilege to reign, not with authority to tyrannise; such a charter as a wise and powerful monarch would give to his vicegerent, to govern with righteousness and mercy. What can be more abhorrent from all just notions of the beneficent Parent of all, than to imagine it could be for any but a merciful end, that he constituted man the lord of the lower creation? The very superiority of man's powers is a reason for discretion and lenity in their use; for they are seldom withstood, or exasperated by opposition. He triumphs in his undisputed dominion over the animal tribes, and boasts that though he be surpassed by one or another in fleetness, or muscular strength, in hearing, or in sight, he surpasses them all in the combination of his faculties under the guidance of reason; the strongest cannot cope with his potent enginery, nor the fleetest escape his arrows and his balls. But though amply empowered to conquer, to subdue, and to tame, he has no privilege from heaven to go forth, like a demon of destruction, wantonly and unsparingly to slaughter and destroy. The indulgence to use is not to be misinterpreted into a liberty to abuse the gifts of Providence. We may pluck the fruit, but not hew down the tree. We may urge the nerves and sinews of the courser, but we |
