It is well to write, and legislate, and pray for better and kinder treatment of these frightened, thirst-maddened, tortured creatures on their journey to our tables, but the surest, quickest way to help (and this can be done even while continuing to work for the alleviation of their sufferings) is to stop feeding upon them. In a recent issue of a paper devoted to humane matters there is an indignant protest against the sufferings endured by crated chickens in a certain market, and another article deplores the cruelty shown to turtles in the same place, but when we know the writers of these protests to be still willing to use these creatures on their tables, it is not always easy to fully credit their tender-heartedness. In another such paper there appear from year to year sentimental pictures and poems extolling the kindliness and virtues of "the cattle upon a thousand hills," while those same pages print instructions on the most humane way of slaying them, giving as a reason for the sudden and painless death described that suffering "poisons the meat." The favourite phrase, "our four-footed friends," seems rather an anachronism in the face of our acknowledged relations to them as eater and eaten, for the phrase indicates a mutual pact of friendship, which, however well sustained by them, is dishonoured by man; for even cannibals, we are told, sink no lower than to eat their foes. The demand for butcher's meat may not seem materially lessened because I do not eat it, but it is lessened notwithstanding, and I rejoice to know that in the past seven years my abstinence from flesh must have resulted in a little less slaughter, and I am glad to have reduced by even one drop the depth of that ocean of blood. I have heard the Biblical statement that man was to have dominion over all the earth quoted as a justification for the eating of the lower animals. We will some day be so civilised that we will recognise the great truth that dominion implies care, and guardianship, and protection rather than the right to destroy. The first objection voiced against Vegetarianism is not usually against its principle, but its practice; we are told that the refusal to eat meat causes inconvenience, and that it is best to "eat what is set before you, asking no questions for conscience's sake." I could respect the position of one who literally believed and consistently acted on this mandate, but where in Christendom can he be found? Few of us could or would eat the flesh of a pet lamb, or partake knowingly of horse flesh, or could or would feel called upon to dine on these lines with the peoples who eat dog, or with so-called cannibals. The host might have secured, in a broad spirit of hospitality, just the particular carcass which most pleased his own palate, but courtesy seldom forces us to eat any flesh other than the sorts to which our own habits have accustomed us.