Two stoats, a weasel, and a jay, In varied stages of decay, Are hanging on the gibbet-tree For all the woodland folk to see, And tattered rags swing to and fro Remains of what was once a crow. What were their crimes that when they died The Earth was not allowed to hide Their mangled corpses out of sight, Instead of dangling in the light? They didn't sin against the Law Of “Naturered in tooth and claw,” But 'gainst the edicts of the keeper Who plays the part of Death the Reaper, And doth with deadly gun determine What creatures shall be classed as vermin. Whether we gibbets find, or grace, Depends on accident of place, For what is vice in Turkestan May be a virtue in Japan. F. C. G. And what about gardeners? Why, quite recently I was solemnly assured by one of the profession that I should “kill without mercy”--those were his words--every frog or toad I found in a greenhouse! But for that matter, don't we remember the harsh decrees of our pastors and masters when as children we yielded to an instinct that had not yet been atrophied, and slaughtered all the flies that approached us. I remember that, after a perceptor's reasoning with me through the medium of a superannuated razor-strop, I was told that to kill a bluebottle was a sin. Now science has come to the rescue of the new generation from the consequences of the ignorance of the old, and the boy who kills most flies in the course of a season is handsomely rewarded. What is pronounced a sin in one generation is looked on as a virtue in the next. I recollect seeing it stated in a _Zoology for the Use of Schools_, compiled by an F.R.S., with long quotations from Milton at the head of every chapter, that the reason why some fishes of the Tropics were so gorgeously coloured was to enable them to be more easily seen by the voracious enemy that was pursuing them. That was why God had endowed the glowworm with his glow--to give him a better chance of attracting the attention of the nightingale or any other bird that did not go to roost before dark! And God had also given the firefly its spark that it might display its hospitality to the same birds that had been entertained by the glow-worm! My Informant had not mastered the alphabet of Nature.