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I once attended a course of Lectures 'on the Evidence of Design in Creation' * I think those Lectures were intended to show that all causes & effects were for some benevolent purpose. Now we all know that animals of superior ? will attack, kill & eat other animals of an inferior sort, & man in some parts of the World is not over particular in doing the same. But to my story - the poultry in many parts of Texas is sadly permeated by the Fox, Wild cat, oppossum, coon, Skunk &c of the class of Quadrupeds, but this seldom in the day time, and poultry roost generally on the boughs of trees 30 & 60 feet from the ground; but in the day time the Hawk takes a position on a tree near the walk of Poultry & when he sees a chance, he dashed with his greatest rapidity at a chick or young chicken, & off he is with his prey. Thus it is that the most melancholy X heart rending & ? half-smothered crows of roosters, painful chuckles of the hens are heard & this commotion does not cease for some time, & often the Hawk is back for a second victim ere the poultry is quiet. One Hawk I have seen carry away four chicks in a fore-noon. But retribution occasionally awaits