DELIRIUM TREMENS

Augmented fleets of locusts, gathering for summer manoeuvers in the sugar belt, recently swooped down over Manila in such numbers as to put that city in semi-darkness for almost six hours. A game of gold was interrupted. In the Maine woods a whole forestry service is goading an army of slugs and other parasites to a counter-offensive against the gypsy moth, which is destroying the forests. At the same time legislators in seaboard states are rallying to the aid of the oyster, in grave danger of extinction. It is only at such times, when privilege and property is in danger, that the present society of high finance deigns to notice the lowly beast bird or fish.

Not everyone has treated the creatures with so little consideration. Even the Pied Piper of Hamlin took the trouble to produce a tune which would appeal to rats. In France and Switzerland animals were granted due process of law and one famous lawyer is know to have defended rats in court at Autun. The interest of some men takes the form a animal study. An English enthusiast reports the appearance of a plague of blind moles, a reaction, he thinks, of the war and the disappearance of the Hanoverian rat, and unwelcome attache to the House of Hanover.

Few men have shown so much interest in animals as those who have just returned from expeditions to Australia and South America in search of specimens. Such travel has its compensations. There is considerable distinction in being on terms of familiarity with a live cassowary, to say nothing of a wallaroo. These men derive great satisfaction from pacing the deck with the paw of a wallaby tucked under one arm, and a cortege consisting of a duck-billed platypus, a green opossum and wombats trailing in the rear. One ship brought a huge tortoise, the last of his race, giant lizards, penguins and cormorants that had forgotten how to fly.

Such fraternizing with fur and feather to simple souls is as inspiring as the recent action of the mercenary New York council is distressing. Those citizens even begrudged the expense of burying 55,238 eats, three elephants and an alligator that died struggling against the indifference of the moneyed million of the metropolis.