| In the course of my reading I had come
across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized
a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl and to provide some
fresh meat for his use. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of
those great animals and ate part of one of then and left the seventy-one to rot.
In order to determine the difference between all anaconda and an earl, I had
seven lambs turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful snake immediately
crashed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no
further interest in the lambs and no inclination to harm them. I tried this
experiment with other anacondas, always with same result. The fact stood proven
that the difference between and earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel
and the anaconda isn't; and the earl wantonly destroyed what not descended from
the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the
anaconda and had lost a good deal in the transition. I was aware that many men who have accumulated more money than they can ever use have shown a hunger for more and have not hesitated to cheat ignorant and the help- less out of their poor serving in order to partially satisfy that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and domestic animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by trickery. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is greedy. In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offer, then takes revenge, The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals. |