POINTS FROM LETTERS
- Is NATURE CRUEL ?
With reference to Mr. Walter Crick's letter on the " Cruelty of Cats," it may be that the cat is not only " perfectly inno- cent," but " most merciful " as well • and far from torturing the mouse, has sufficient instinct to imow that the first bite she gave it has rendered it immune to suffering • certainly it - has caused it to act in a contrary way to what it would naturally ; for any one who has watched the interesting and fascinating game of " cat and mouse " will have noticed that the mouse will run as readily towards the cat as it will away from- her. Perhaps some of your readers may be able to give some explanation.—MILDRED DE COURCY IRELAND, Abington Piggotts Hall, Royston.
Judging from his letter in your issue of 6th inst., Mr. Massingham holds that the torture of -the mouse by the harmless necessary house-fed cat, or the slow consumption of the living caterpillar by the grubs of the ichneumon fly, are not to be rightly styled cruel unless the cruelty is conscious ; and, as regards the cat, also pleasurable—on the part of the' animal which inflicts the suffering. Mr. Massingham would - perhaps not agree that the test of nature's cruelty- lies not in the feelings of the inflictors but of the victims. The mouse is evidently hideously conscious of the cat's cruelty towards it,
and if we_ knew more of the psychology of the caterpillar while being- slowly eaten alive, we should probably find its sensations are much the same. I contend, therefore, that nature's methods are cruel from the only' point of view from which they can be judged, i.e., that of the victims of her evolutionary processes.—G. M. SIMON, Two Gables, Pinner, Middlesex. _
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