Nature keeps one form in check with another form, and thus, like a wise capitalist, distributes her investments so that the income is constant. If she put her funds all in mice and birds, the cats and owls would soon starve; if she put them all in woodchucks, the pastures and meadows would soon fail the herds. And this reminds me how man often disturbs the balance of nature; the clearing-up and the cultivation of the land have held in check the natural enemies of the woodchucks--foxes and owls--at the same time that they have greatly increased the woodchuck’s sources of food-supply, so that in some sections these rodents have become a real pest to the farmer. The same changed conditions appreciably favor the meadow mice, and they, too, seem to be on the increase. But this increase again may stimulate the increase of the mice-hunting hawks, and thus the balance be maintained. Herein lies the danger of introducing new forms of wild life in a country--their natural enemies are not always on hand to check them. The mongoose has overrun Jamaica and has not yet found an adequate natural enemy. Introduced into this country, it would be an incalculable calamity, though in time it would doubtless meet with a natural check. Our weasels, related to the mongoose, are prolific, and seem to have few natural enemies, and yet they do not unduly increase; it seems as if some unknown hand must stay them. They prey upon all the smaller rodents and find them easy victims, yet these rodents are vastly more numerous than the blood-suckers. I often see marks upon the snow where the muskrat and the rabbit have fallen before them, and yet one sees scores of these animals to one weasel or mink. How our domestic animals would suffer if they had the gift of ideation and knew what awaited them! Pope anticipated me when he wrote: “The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason could he skip and play? “Pleased to the last he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.” If the horse only knew his own strength, and knew that he had “rights,” would there not soon be a horse rebellion? Would the swine and the cattle fatten in their pens and stalls if they knew what is before them? Animals suffer no mental anguish either over the past or concerning the future; they live in the present moment; no future looms before them, no past haunts their memories. Their pain is brief, their joy is unconscious; they live to feed and breed; they slay without penalties, and they are slain without remorse; they find their place and live their day, and Mother Nature reaps the harvest.