"quantities. They put them in the ground at small "intervals from each other, along with two or three "grains of maize. At a particular season of the year "the Sea throws upon the shore such quantities of "live pilchers, that they have an abundant supply for ❝ food and for manure, and this to such a degree, "that after these demands are satisfied, they could "easily load whole ships with the overplus.'

It is obvious that the coast of Peru is nearly the boundary of the emigration of the pilchers which set out from the South Pole, as the coasts of the Black Sea are the boundary of that of the herrings which issue from the North Pole. The continuation and direction of these two bands, the pilchers of the South and the herrings of the North, are nearly of the same length, and their destinies are at last similar. It would appear as if certain Nereïds were annually commissioned to conduct from the Poles those innumerable swarms of fishes, to furnish subsistence to the inhabitants of the temperate Zones; and that, having arrived at the ter mination of their course, in the hot Latitudes, where fruits are produced abundantly, they empty the gleanings of their nets upon the shore.

It will not be so easy a task, I confess, to refer to the beneficence of Nature the wars which animals wage with each other. Why should beasts of prey exist? Supposing me incapable of resolving this dif ficulty, Nature must not be accused of cruelty because I am deficient in mental ability. She has arranged what we do know with such consummate wisdom, that we are bound to give her credit for the same character of wisdom in cases, where we cannot

find her out unto perfection. I will have the courage, however, to declare my opinion, and to offer a reply to this question; and so much the rather, as it affords me an opportunity of presenting some observations which I consider as at least new, if not worthy of attention.

First of all, Beasts of prey are necessary. What otherwise would become of the carcases of so many animals which perish both on the land and in the water, and which they would consequently poison with infection. Several species of carnivorous animals, it must be allowed, devour their while yet prey living. But who can tell whether in this they do not transgress the law of their nature? Man knows very little of his own History. How is it possible he should know that of the beasts? Captain Cook observed, in a desert island of the Southern Ocean, that the sealions, the sea-calves, the white bears, the sots, the eagles, the vultures, lived in perfect concord, no one tribe giving the least disturbance to another. I have observed a similar good agreement among the fool and the frigat of the island of Ascension. But, after all, we must not compliment them too highly on their moderation. It was merely an association of plunderers; they lived peaceably together, that they might devour unmolested their common prey, the fishes, which they all gulped down alive.

Let us revert to the great principle of Nature. She has made nothing in vain. She destines few animals to die of old age; nay, I believe that she permits Man alone to complete his career of life, because his old age alone can be useful to his fellow-creatures. To

what

what purpose would serve among the brute creation grandsires destitute of reflection, to progeny brough into existence in the maturity of their experience? On the other hand, what assistance could decrepit parents find among children, which abandon them the instant they have learned to swim, fly, or walk? Old age would be to them a burthen from which they are delivered by the ferocious animals. Besides, from their unobstructed generations would arise a posterity without end, which the Globe is not sufficient to contain. The preservation of individuals would involve the extinction of the species.

Animals might always live, I shall be told, in a proportion adapted to the places which they inhabit; but in that case they must cease to multiply; and from that moment farewell the loves, the nests, the alliances, the foresight, and all the harmonies which subsist among them. Every thing that is born is doomed to die. But Nature, in devoting them to death, takes from them that which could render the instant of it cruel. It is usually in the night-time, and in the hour of sleep, that they sink under the fangs and the teeth of their destroyers. Twenty strokes, sent home in one instant to the sources of life, afford no leisure to reflect that they are going to lose it. That fatal moment is not embittered to them by any of the feelings which render it so painful to most of the Human Race, regret for the past, and solicitude about futurity. Their unanxious spirits vanish into the shades of night, in the midst of a life of innocence, and frequently during the indulgence of the fond illusions of love.

Unknown

Unknown compensations may perhaps farther sweeten this last transition. I shall observe at least, as a circumstance deserving the most attentive consideration, that the animal species, whose life is sacrificed to the support of that of others, such as that of insects, do not appear possessed of any sensibility. If the leg of a fly happens to be torn away, she goes and comes as if she had lost nothing; the cutting off a limb so considerable is followed by no fainting, nor convulsion, nor scream, nor symptom of pain, whatever. Cruel children amuse themselves with thrusting straws into their anus; they rise into the air thus empaled; they walk about, and perform all their usual motions, without seeming to mind it. Others take lady-birds, tear off a large limb, run a pin through the nerves and cartilages of the thigh, and attach them with a slip of paper to a stick. These unfeeling insects fly humming round and round the stick unweariedly, and without any appearance of suffering pain. Reaumur one day cut off the fleshy and muscular horn of a large caterpillar, which continued to feed as if no mutilation had taken place. Is it possible to think that beings so tranquil in the hands of children and philosophers, endure any feeling of pain when they are gobbled down in the air by the birds?

These observations might easily beextended much farther: particularly to that class of fishes which have neither bone nor blood, and of these consist the greatest number of the inhabitants of the Seas, and they appear to be equally void of sensibility. I have seen between the Tropics a tunny, from the nape

of

and are eaten raw from the pickle, as we do anchovies.

The South Pole is not less productive of fishes than the North. The Nations which are nearest to it, such as the inhabitants of the islands of Georgia, of New Zealand, of Maire's Strait, of the Terra-delFuego, of Magellan's Strait, live on fish, and practise husbandry of no kind. That honest Navigator, Sir John Narbrough, says, in his Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, that Port-Desire, which lies in 47° 48 South Latitude, is so filled with penguins, seacalves, and sea-lions, that any vessel touching there may find provisions in abundance. All these animals, which are there uncommonly fat, live entirely on fish. When he was in Magellan's Strait, he caught at a single draught of the net more than five hundred large fishes, resembling the mullet, as long as a man's leg; smelts twenty inches long; a great quantity of fish like the anchovy; in a word, they found of every sort such an abundant profusion, that they ate nothing else during their stay in those parts. The beautiful mother-of-pearl shells which enrich our cabinets, under the name of the Magellan-oyster, are there of a prodigious size, and excellent to eat. The lempit, in like manner, grows there to a prodigious magnitude. There must be, continues he, on these shores an infinite number of fishes to support the seacalves, the penguins, and the other fowls, which live solely on fish, and which are all equally fat, though their number is beyond computation. They one day killed four hundred sea-lions in the space of half an hour. Of these some were eighteen feet long. Those which

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