ll the same to them. Again,
Birds have their own gardens and farms from which they do not wander,
and within which they will tolerate no interference. Their ideas of the
rights of property are far stricter than those of some statesmen. As to
freedom, they have their daily duties as much as a mechanic in a mill or
a clerk in an office. They suffer under alarms, moreover, from which we
are happily free. Mr. Galton believes that the life of wild animals is
very anxious. "From my own recollection," he says, "I believe that every
antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days
upon an average, and that he starts or gallops under the influence of a
false alarm many times in a day. Those who have crouched at night by the
side of pools in the desert, in order to have a shot at the beasts that
frequent it, see strange scenes of animal life; how the creatures gambol
at one moment and fight at another; how a herd suddenly halts in
strained attention, and then breaks into a maddened rush as one of them
becomes conscious of the stealthy movements or rank scent of a beast of
prey. Now this hourly life-and-death excitement is a keen delight to
most wild creatures, but must be peculiarly distracting to the
comfort-loving temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to
endure the crass habits and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose
that an animal which has been captured and half-tamed, received
ill-usage from his captors, either as punishment or through mere
brutality, and that he rushed indignantly into the forest with his ribs
aching from blows and stones. If a comfort-loving animal, he will
probably be no gainer by the change, more serious alarms and no less
ill-usage awaits him: he hears the roar of the wild beasts, and the
headlong gallop of the frightened herds, and he finds the buttings and
the kicks of other animals harder to endure than the blows from which he
fled: he has peculiar disadvantages from being a stranger; the herds of
his own species which he seeks for companionship constitute so many
cliques, into which he can only find admission by more fighting with
their strongest members than he has spirit to undergo. As a set-off
against these miseries, the freedom of savage life has no charms for his
temperament; so the end of it is, that with a heavy heart he turns back
to the habitation he had quitted."

But though animals may not be free, I hope and believe that they are
happy. Dr. Huds