speak." "Then, my dear, I will engage for you," replied her mamma, "that you will put but very few creatures to death. But in order to have a proper notion of their form, you must study natural history, from whence you will learn how wonderful their construction is, how carefully and tenderly the inferior creatures provide for their young, how ingenious their various employments are, how far they are from harbouring malice against the human species, and how excellently they are informed and instructed by their great Creator for the enjoyment of happiness in their different classes of existence, which happiness we have certainly no right wantonly to disturb.
"Besides, it is really a meanness to destroy any creature merely because it is little, and, in children, particularly absurd to do so; for, upon this principle, they must themselves expect to be constantly ill-treated, though no animal stands more in need of tenderness than they do for many years from the time of their coming into the world: and even men and women might expect to be annihilated by the power of the great Creator, if everything that is little were to be destroyed. Neither do I know how we can precisely call anything great or little, since it is only so by comparing it with others. An ant or a fly may appear, to one of its own species, whose eyes
