3-028-337 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Gambols Disturbed," by G. B. Goddard, 1870. Engraving of a painting. 'The "conies are a feeble folk," and unable to resist or to escape an enemy so much stronger, and so crafty and swift as the one whose lithe and supple form is seen crouching in the fern and preparing for a sudden rush upon his unwary victims. So have we seen a couple of rabbits in the cage of the boa constrictor at the Zoological Gardens, frolic about with ignorant audacity and jump over the fatal folds of the huge serpent's body, till the monster arises and seizes them with his teeth, and binds them in the crushing coils of his mighty length, and hugs them to death before he swallows them whole. The fox is just as stealthy, though he kills in another fashion, with a grip and toss which breaks the rabbit's neck, after which he carries off his booty, as the human hunter might do, for the repast of his wife and children, in some distant hole of the earth or under the shade of the greenwood in this merry month of June, when the cubs are carefully counted for the chase of next December. "Live and let live" is the rule of morality; but natural history informs us that if some are to live some others must die'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.