animals is one of the marks of modern Ceylon. The modern Burman is a Buddhist and should not take life. But, like Gautama Buddha himself, he eats flesh, so he contents his conscience by calling the butcher a Muhammadan. We are apt to judge of the results of a creed from the aims of its commandments, which is putting the cart before the horse. Yet we ought to know better, for the main stress of our Christian commandment is to lay up no treasure on earth, to consider the lilies of the field, to sell all and follow the Christ, etc. etc. In the Christian capitals of the Western world one may see how much of this injunction is obeyed.

The ordinary Englishman will not easily be persuaded that the act of killing an animal or bird for food is necessarily a proof of cruelty. I write these lines in an English house in the country, the gracious lady whereof has just returned from a visit. to some friends in the village, who had sent word that their pig was killed. Here is a delicate and refined Englishwoman going in cold blood to see a dead pig! Nothing could be more horrible from a Hindu or Muhammadan point of view, but from that of English country life it is natural enough. The lady is a valued friend of a struggling family. Their pig has been kindly treated and carefully fed for months, and its death is a sort of festival; they are proud of its weight and size, and it is one of the triumphs of their provident and thrifty lives. "And the pig?" says the master of the house at lunch. "Well, I had to look at the pig, and it seemed a

fine pig enough. They said it weighed 14 score, and I said it must be the largest they had fed since their mother died, and they were all much pleased, and wanted to tell me stories of past pigs, but I managed to escape.'

The topsy-turvy morality of the East would give a higher place to the Levitically clean Hindu, who would die sooner than eat flesh, but who would also rather die than touch or help a dying man of a low caste near his door, than to the English lady whose life is spent in active beneficence, but who is defiled by eating beef and approaching the dead body of a pig.

The animal hospitals of India have been frequently quoted, and with some reason, as a proof of the tender mercy of the country. There are three of these interesting institutions on the great continent, at Bombay, Surat, and Ahmedabad, chiefly maintained by Banians of the Jain faith. The Bombay "pinjrapol," however, is said to have been largely endowed by the generous Parsee, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, first baronet of the name. They are not hospitals in the true sense, for ailments are not treated, but simply refuges for halt, maimed, diseased, and blind creatures for whom nobody cares. Until the late Mr. J. H. Steel, Principal of the Bombay Veterinary College, took compassion on the inmates and regularly visited the place, no attempt had ever been made to alleviate their sufferings; and the institution is of some antiquity. Ritual reverence for life does not include the per

formance of acts of mercy. It is enough to save the animal from immediate death, and to place food within its reach. So you see there creatures with unset broken limbs, with hoofs eighteen inches long, and monstrous wens. The dogs, as I remember them twenty years ago, were a heart-breaking sight, confined, with nothing to do but fight, insufficiently fed, and all afflicted with one equal misery of mange. A quaint feature of the place is an apartment supposed to be full of the vermin that feed on mankind. From time to time a man is paid to spend a night in this den in order to give the cherished insects a dinner, but first he is drugged to insensibility, lest in his natural irritation he should be tempted to destroy some of them. I have always doubted this, and certainly never saw it done, but it is one of the proudest traditions of the "pinjrapol," vouched for by Native gentlemen of undoubted authority.

There are admirable points in the ritual respect for life, but it is not true humanity, nor is it practised with sufficient intelligence or feeling to profit the animal. We in the West may at least learn from it the reflection that all living things cling to life, nor need we in the present state of Veterinary science be always so prompt with pistol or poleaxe as is our habit.

But it must be noted that the sect which cares for animal hospitals is comparatively small, with only a local influence, and that its practice in this matter is the subject of a good deal of popular gibe. For it is not easy to respect people who collect

caterpillars, and feed fleas and other vermin with human blood, nor is it only to the Occidental that a fantastic glorification of the letter of a law may show the death of its spirit.

Oriental tender mercy has always been liable to this taint of grotesque exaggeration. That renowned model of kindness and generosity, whose name is on every Oriental's lips, and whose deeds are constantly quoted-Hatim Tai-fed his brother the tiger (as St. Francis of Assisi would say) with portions of flesh cut from his own limbs. This This may be heroic, but, like many other illustrious examples of Oriental goodness, it is also absurd, and so remote from every possibility of ordinary life and conduct. as to exert no practical influence as a lesson.

Yet, while maintaining that no precept of mercy has protected animals in servitude in India, we may gladly admit that a more humane temper prevails with regard to free creatures than in the West. Village boys are not there seen stoning frogs or setting dogs at cats, nor tying kettles to dogs' tails, and it has not been found necessary to forbid birdnesting by Act of Parliament. The Indian schoolboy on his to school way numbers of squirrels, much resembling the chipmunk of America, but he never throws a stone at them; and the sparrow, the crow, the maina, and the hoopoe move from his path without a flutter of fear. The india-rubber catapult or tweaker of the West has not yet reached him, while the sling and the goldl or pellet-bow

passes

(the "stone bow" of Shakspeare) seem to be only used when guarding fruit and crops from the hungry parrakeet and the omnivorous crow.

One of the most surprising things in the country is the patience with which depredations on the crops are endured. With far less provocation the English farmer organises sparrow clubs, and freely uses the gun, the trap, and the poisoned bait. And the Indian farmer suffers from creatures that earn no dole of grain by occasional insecticide. The monkey, the nilghai, the black buck, the wild pig, and the parrakeet fatten at his expense, and never kill a caterpillar or a weevil in return. He and his family spend long and dismal hours on a platform of sticks raised a few feet above the crops, whence they lift their voices against legions of thieves. The principle of abstaining from slaughter is pushed to an almost suicidal point in purely Hindu regions, and becomes a serious trouble at times. A large tract of fertile country in the N.-W. Provinces, bordering on the Bhurtpore State, is now lapsing into jungle on account of the inroads of the nilghai and the wild pig. The "blue cow" or nilghai is sacred, and may not be killed even by the villagers whom the creature drives from their homes, and there are not enough sportsmen or tigers to keep down the wild boar.

Gardeners try to scare the birds with elaborate arrangements of string, bamboos, old pans, and stones in their fruit trees; and sometimes a watcher sits like a spider at the centre of an arrangement of cords, radiating all over the field, so that an alarming