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358 world, which, upon the whole, are better than our ways.

There is a very fine line, as it seems to me, between thinking it wrong that a snake in confinement should eat in the way that nature has instructed it to, and wishing to exterminate snakes and various other wild animals, because of the way they have of dining. I may well think so, for the line, to my knowledge, has been overstepped, and here, in these remote islands, there are alarming indications of a campaign to be waged—with no other reason than this—against various poor birds, who are under the same necessity as was Caliban, of eating their dinners. Some, for instance—and they advocate their views in the local papers—wish the gulls to be shot down, on account of the kittiwakes, whilst others would seek vengeance on the skuas for the way in which they persecute the gulls. It seems wonderful that such grotesque views should be held by educated people, but they seem to me to be the same in principle with those which would deny to snakes, in captivity, the natural use of their bodily structure. For myself, I only believe in such a Zoological Gardens as I have tried to sketch, and hope I have foreshadowed. But if the rational study of the habits and life history of the creatures confined there be not the raison d'être of its existence, I, at any rate, can admit no other, and I would as soon think of training spiders not to make webs, as of