are born of her womb and live in blind submission to her dictates.

There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects of
prey--all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other
life,--but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in
fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of animals or
of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the encroachments of
another; and the reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food
of others, are always proportioned to the demand they are destined to
supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and,
while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the
cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation,
thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume. [Footnote: The
terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the chase
of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with the
entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of the
animal which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South
America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and hairs; the
buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the
walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacen, and some other
marine animals, for their whalebone and oil; the ostrich and other large
birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in
New England, by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh
being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same
quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a
vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products
valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these
cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale
destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value
as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are