Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1903-02-14 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NORTHERN WEEKLY GAZETTE.  The Massacre of the Innocents.  What a beautiful nh,reing, let us go out I and kill something. Su, h is the continental expression indicenve of ihe dip sition of the average Britesher, aid I am afraid there is a large ground-work of truth beneath the idea. We kill for food, we kill for study, and we kill for pleasure; in fact, we often kill out of pure cussedness from a lust for blood. As an instance of the latter, I have known a schoolboy rifle a starling's nest which contained only tender bare nestlings, and with fiandiali cruelty rip them up and dismember them with a, pietas of broken glass. I could harrow your feelings with zcore of instanas of cruelty perpetrated under various pretexts, and would do so but for lack of room, as it is neoetisary that the publie should be made aware of the unapeakable horrors onmmitted under many shallow guises, even at the risk of offending the tastes of the supersensitive. But if there is a class that is free from this taint of cruelty it should surely be the naturalists. Naturalist. fonsooth. What can be more unnatural than this maiming and slaying of God's helpless creatures. The naturalist who knows and loves the enimal world, wlse finds his chief delight in a loving study of animate creation, who realises how intricate are the relations and co-relations of the various types of anirnality, who fools that Nature is harmonious and beautiful, should surely be the last to raise a hand except in the way of kindness to a-ny dumb animal; and if the naturalist withholds his pretection, pray to whom may the helpless creatures look for mercy and love? Now a word or two with my friend Mr Milburn, who defends his shooting iron on the plea of obtaining knowledge, etc. This, I may say, in passing, is the 6xcuse put forward by those spec alists in cruelty, the vivisectors. My own idea is that if we caunot have knowledge without blood let us do without knowledge. It is as much a crime to shoot a common bird as a rare one, and it is little palliation to say that it, is not a frome-bred one, OT that it would probably die even if left alone. Scientists tell us that the sun, moon, and stars have a certain appearanee and composition, but we don't ask them to bring them into the baok garden to verify, neither, I think, should the ornithologist care what doubts are cast upen his statements, so long as he himself knows and states the simple truth. lam very pleased to learn that in spite of the mores of death dealers at Tees-mouth, so few of the larger birds fall victims to their guns— nay, their numbers grow smaller. It is only a question of degree between the man who wages war to extermieation and the one who " judioiously" picks his quarry, hut if we extol the latter we cannot conscientiously decry the former. Singular to say in matters pertaining to the genus homo. the retail murderer is hanged, while the wholesale is loaded with honour and glory and rewarded with a peerage. Let each observer in his own district carefully study the living free-moving creature in its own haunts, where its life and movements and habits are natural. There is ample room for all who love their fellow creatures, and a great amount of knowledge to be gathered yet respecting their life histories before having recourse to the gun, and, indeed, a eourse of this calm, ennobling study will probably eliminate all desire to destroy any part of this interesting and wonderful panorama of Nature. In conclusion, may T quote the following passage from Wardla,w Kennedy, which is very apropos:— " Facts of strueture and of descent are. if we aim at completeuess, necessary, Put they must come second, not first. For knowledge of man we don't look to books, nor to hospital dissecting room. An animal is no longer an animal when the life is out of it, but a, mass of tissues and vessels, a stuffed skin, or a skeleton, the study of which may be interesting, but is only indirectly the study of animals. The gunner or collector mae7 cherish the delusion that he is a naturalist when he is killing specimens for his private collection, and destroying for himself and others the passibility of observing and studying their life, but it is a class which we may hope is diminishing. To the real knowledge of animals it is in the power of the humblest observer to add something; his eyes or his field-glass are the only apparatus he needs."—J. Swales, Sleights.