Page images
PDF
EPUB

the mighty redundancy which, in a very short time, would cover the earth like an irresistible and universal inundation. To live and to increase, seems to be the only object of irrational creatures, whether amongst men or brutes; and the consequences of indiscriminate, unchecked, libidinage, would be, and are, the same to both.

Nothing, then, can be more childish, or unphilosophical, than to call the tiger cruel, the eagle inexorable, or the crocodile merciless, attaching any peculiar malignity or injustice to those terms; since, in allaying their imperious appetites, such animals are but fulfilling, in their various capacities, the word of Him who commanded the one to roam the forests—another to haunt the inaccessible heights of craggy mountainsand a third to dwell amidst the solitary waters of a desert land-each to mitigate evils that would soon become fatal and universal without the use of such agency. In the sight of OMNIPOTENCE, and of unlimited benevolence, the lion is not less in

nocent in the destruction of his prey, even though that prey should be the proud lord of the creation himself, than the bleating lamb whilst browsing on the tender grass allotted for its food: nor is the gaunt wolf, smeared with gore, and warm from the carnage, more guilty than the plaintive dove that picks up the scattered grain of the field. To the GOD of Nature the scream of the vulture, echoing from the awful solitudes of the Andes, is not more frightful than the melodious strains of the nightingale, rising in full chorus from the groves of Italy. Man alone is cruel; he alone is oppressive and inexorable; and he alone bears the tremendous responsibility.

CHAP. IX.

Further Observations on the Utility of Animals, illustrated by more familiar and obvious Instances. Of the Swallow, Common Earth-worms, Viper, and Toad. The simallest and weakest of Animals are of infinite Import

ance.

HAVING alluded to a few exotic animals, whose use in the creation is not so immediately, or clearly, manifest, for the express purpose of shewing that the utility even of the most noxious and destructive, or the most strange and unaccountable animals in appearance, may be discovered, by attentive investigation. I shall now adduce a few examples that may be deemed less equivocal.

Every one in this country knows that one of the earliest, most lively, interesting, and lovely harbingers of summer, is the swallow; insomuch, that it long ago became a pro

verb amongst the rustics of England, that 66 one swallow does not make a summer." It is, however, to be feared, that if a time does not come when one swallow will make a summer, a period may arrive when very few of this beautiful species will appear in this part of the European hemisphere; for it is very certain that the number of British hirundines, including all the species, have rapidly decreased of late years; and this decrease seems to proceed from several causes; one of which arises from a childish and very cruel practice that is but too general throughout Great Britain; the inhumanity, impolicy, and bad consequences of which cannot be more clearly shewn, or more effectually inveighed against, than by pointing out the vast utility of these interesting little summer visitants.

The proper and natural food of swallows consists almost entirely of gnats, flies, and small coleopterous insects; and some notion of the myriads of these insects destroyed by swallows alone, without mentioning the other hirundines, may be formed from a

most pleasing and interesting memoir furnished by the Rev. WALTER TREVELYAN, of Long-Witton in Northumberland *, to Mr. BEWICK; wherein it is mentioned, that a tame and a young swallow could eat from seven hundred to one thousand flies in a day. Now, if an immatured bird of this species, and in a confined state too, could destroy so many, we may be assured, that when at large, and having others to provide for as well as themselves, swallows must commit very wide and extensive devastation amongst winged insects. Supposing them to arrive in England about the middle of April, and to depart about the middle, or latter end, of September, making a stay of five whole months in this climate; and allowing that each swallow destroys from one to two thousand flies daily, the same bird must clear the region it inhabits of nearly 300,000 noxious, or troublesome, animals in one summer; and, before any conception of the myriads destroyed, in the course of a single

*See BEWICK's British Birds, vol. i. p. 263.

« PreviousContinue »