power': that he has now acquired a dominion
over the material world, and a consequent facility
of increase, so as to render it probable that
the whole surface of the earth may soon be over-run
by this engrossing anomaly, to the annihilation
of every wonderful and beautiful variety of
animated existence which does not administer
to his wants." They apprehend that the
multiplication and spread of the human race will have
the effect of exterminating whole species and
genera of wild animals, and perhaps of plants.
It may so turn out, to some extent. The bustard
and the wild turkey may, perhaps, one day
be laid low in the same grave of extinction which
has swallowed up the dodo. With railways
invading Africa and Asia, it is not difficult to hear
in imagination the funeral knell of the last
wild elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe. Insular animals
are exposed to extermination by the increase
of population and agriculture, as happened
with the wolves of England, the capercali of
Scotland, the Nestor parrot of Norfolk Island,
the aboriginal black man of Van Diemen's Land;
but for continental faunae a source of safety
and a door of escape exist in the instincts and
propensities of man himself.

Man's power of increase and the exercise of
his tyranny over the wide-spread earth, are
greatly checked by his gregarious tendencies.
The crowds who continually stream into great
cities and die there childless, are so many petty
tyrants, who abdicate their share of territory in
the land in favour of its natural brute occupants.
If the entire populations of Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, and every other great European city, were
uniformly dispersed over Europe, each family
located on an equal area, and living on the produce
of the culture of that area—which might
be the case, if men were solitary instead of
gregarious in their habits—in twenty years only
there must take place a perceptible diminution
in the numbers of wild animals, birds, and even
insects. But the great surplus of the rural population
is drawn off by the temptations of town,
leaving the field clear for the occupancy of brutes
in default of the occupancy of men.

War is a more efficient institution for the
preservation of the ferae naturae than at first
sight appears. The chase may be the best
school for war; but war both gives full
employment to the sportsman, and also diminishes
his numbers. While the cat is away, the mice
will play, and increase and multiply. Our
battles, whether on a grand scale or in single
combat, ought to be hailed, by our four-footed
and our winged game and vermin, as most auspicious
events. When hostile armies prepare
to meet in deadly shock, the crows and ravens
overhead caw and croak their approval; the rat
in the hedgerow squeaks his congratulations to
the fox in the brake; the bear in the pine-wood
growls his deep satisfaction to the exulting chamois
on the Alpine cliff. Can it be doubted
that the Indian mutiny and its suppression,
respited the lives of sundry tigers, lions, wild
swine, and jungle-fowl, affording them a long
truce for the undisturbed rearing of numerous
litters and broods? It is evident enough, that
not many wild races of animals are likely to
become extinct until wars shall have utterly
ceased; and when that is likely to happen, we
may learn by private inquiry of various European
potentates, with a further reference to the powers
of the western hemisphere.

        TAKING PIRATE JUNKS.

WHERE is that large vessel going, steaming
so cautiously up that calm and peaceful strait,
whose transparent waters are only disturbed by
the floats of her powerful paddles? It is Her
Majesty's paddle-wheel steam-frigate Sampson
(so to call her), groping for some of the pirates
that infest the bays and creeks all along the
coast of China, some dozens of whom she has
lately destroyed, and she is now expecting to do
a little more in the same way. The captain is
standing on the bridge, with his first lieutenant
and the master, who, chart in hand, is carefully
conning the ship, as she pursues her way
through the comparatively unknown waters.
There is a low neck of land running half way
across the sound, about half a mile ahead, over
which are to be seen what the shrewd gentlemen
above named very much suspect to be the
mastheads of some piratical junks, and which
junks they intend to favour with a shot or shell,
as the circumstances of the case may seem to
require. But hark to the cry of the leadsman
in the chains, "By the deep, four!" The water
is fast shoaling, and, as the steamer draws
eighteen feet, the master tells the captain that
we must come to anchor. The captain speaks
to his first lieutenant:

"Stand by the best bower anchor for'ard!"

"All ready for letting go, sir," answers the
boatswain from the nightheads; and, in compliance
with another order, gives the necessary
"One, two, three — let go!" with the subsequent
accompaniment of his shrill pipe. There
is a heavy splash, a rattle at the hawse-holes, and
the anchor is down.

"Call the boatswain," hails the first lieutenant
from the quarter-deck; "hands, man and,
arm boats."

In a moment what a rush! But all with the
greatest order; in an inconceivably short space
of time, paddle-box boats and pinnace are got
out, and their guns in; cutters and gigs are
lowered and manned, laying alongside, all awaiting
the order to shove off; every officer and
man is in the anticipation of a good day's work,
the thought of failure or repulse never entering
the heads of sailors when about to prosecute
any undertaking. The wished-for word is at
length given, when we all shove off and give
way for the point, with a will: discipline alone
suppressing a cheer. The cutters are round
first, when the pirates, quite prepared, salute
them with a dozen or two of shot, which come
rattling about their ears, but do no damage beyond
the breaking of an occasional oar or so.