animals, and these are not shedders of blood: and if such an act should be inadvertently perpetrated by any individuals, destructive animals are then appointed to retaliate on them, as we have explained under the head of the ox. The best mode to be adopted by merciful men for putting to death destructive creatures, such as fowls, sparrows, and the like, is the following: let them open a vein, so that it may die from the effusion of blood: there are many precepts of this kind recorded in the _Jashen Sudah_ of the _Móbed Hoshyár_: but philosophers, eminent doctors, and durveshes who abandon the world, never commit such acts: it is however indispensably necessary that a king, in the course of government, should inflict on the evildoer the retaliation due to his conduct. The Móbed _Hoshyár_ relates, in the _Sarud-i-Mastán_, that in the time of Kaíomors and Siamak, no animal of any kind was slain, as they were all obedient to the commands of these princes. So that one of the _Farjúd_, or miraculous powers possessed by the Yezdanian chiefs of Iran, from Kaíomors to Jemshíd, was their appointing a certain class of officers to watch over the animal creation, so that they should not attack each other. For instance, a lion was not permitted to destroy any animal, and if he killed one in the chase, he met with due punishment; consequently no creature was slain or destroyed, and carnage fell into such disuse among noxious animals, that they were all reckoned among the innoxious. However, the skins of animals which had died a natural death were taken off, and in the beginning used as clothing by Kaíomors and his subjects: but they were latterly satisfied with the leaves of trees. Those who embrace the tenets of this holy race attribute this result to the miraculous powers of these monarchs, and some profound thinkers regard it as effected by a _talisman_; whilst many skilled in interpretation hold it to be an enigmatical mode of expression: thus, the animal creation submitting to government implies, the justice of the sovereigns; their vigilance in extirpating corruption and evil, and producing good. In short, when in the course of succession the Gilsháíyán crown came to Húshang, he enjoined the people to eat the superabundant eggs of ducks, domestic fowls, and such like, but not to such a degree that, through their partaking of such food, the race of these creatures should become extinct. When the throne of sovereignty was adorned by the presence of Tahmúras, he said, “It is lawful for carnivorous and noxious creatures to eat dead bodies:” that is, if a lion find a lifeless stag, or a sparrow a dead worm, they may partake of them. In the same manner, when Jemshid assumed the crown, he enacted: “If men of low caste eat the flesh of animals which die a natural death, they commit no sin.” The reason why people do not at present eat of animals which died in the course of nature, is, that their flesh engenders disease, as the