pitiless exterminators, who amused themselves
with building living pyramids, in
which human beings served for stones, and
who did not chose that grass should grow in
places over which their horses had once
passed. But the rat, the emblem of misery,
murder, and rapine—the rat, the emblem of
the Norman or the Muscovite hordes—cannot
disappear from off our soil, till misery and
murder have first been banished from it, and
wise governments have put in practice the
pacific theory which was placed in the mouth
of the great conqueror of Isly, M. le Maréchal
Bugeaud, when he gave as a toast at the
Phalansterian banquet, on the seventh of
April, eighteen hundred and forty, "To the
abolition of war! To the transformation of
armies of destruction into armies of
production!"

The ménage of the Hamster is the perfect
image of the divided household, and the cordial
understanding, existing between husband
and wife amongst Civilisés.The male and
the female agree admirably at first, while
they are pillaging the public in partnership.
Not one single dispute arises until the
moment of dividing the spoil. The male,
who has enjoyed the services of the female in
filling his magazine to repletion—exactly as
the civilised husband invests his wife's dower
in extending his business—the gentleman,
immediately winter sets in, begins by reducing
the lady to a stinted allowance; and then,
under some insulting pretext or other, he
drives her away from the conjugal dwelling.
But madame, who is aware both of her own
rights and of the hiding-place where the
treasure is stored, does not abandon her
share quite so easily. Although turned out
of doors by forcible means, she excavates a
side-way to return to the place, and bleeds
the niggard pretty freely. She does better;
she calls in the assistance of an Egistheus,
and the two together, taking advantage of
their Agamemnon's slumbers, strangle and
eat him up entirely while securely reposing
upon his heaped-up riches. For it is the sure
fate of the hamster to be devoured either by
his female, or his partner, when he has not
the good sense to take the initiative.

The Marmot is the animal who taught the
chimney-sweep to climb between two walls
of rock, or chimney. He also exhales a disagreeable
odour, which is not with out analogy
with the smell of soot. He is the emblem of
the poor mountaineer, stupified with wretchedness,
who patiently resigns himself to the
most disgusting tasks, all for the pleasure of
more indolent mortals.

Dormice are the emblems of industrial parasites,
who spend three-quarters of their
time in doing nothing, and who make up for
their idleness by living upon the labours of
others. All the dormice marry late in life,
like hedgehogs and ambitious people, who
wait till they have made their fortune, and
can settle down in suitable style.

But of all animals that are not objects of
sport, the Bats have been the most unfortunate
in their denomination. In the first place, they
are popularly baptised with the absurd generic
name of chauve-souris, or bald-mice, while
they are neither mice nor bald. Science has
not succeeded better with its latest title of
cheiroptères, or hand-wings, seeing that their
organs of locomotion are neither hands nor
wings. Vespertillons and Anthropomorphes are,
neither of them, a bit better or worse. If
official science determined to honour these
infamies with a Greek name at all hazards, it
ought to have fabricated for them some better
substantive, answering to their natural indications,
such as bird-mammal, fur-bird, or
flying quadruped. However, M. Toussenel
agrees to accept the cheiroptère, both because
of all the filthy things in creation the bald-mouse
was, without contradiction, the hardest
to name, and because he fears to frighten his
young-lady readers by restoring to it its real
title. For the bat is the representative of
Death—and of such a death! A false death.
Real death is a flat nosed thing; whilst bats
have exaggerated noses, sometimes reaching
down to their chest. One single name would
suit it—Bugbear; unless Satanite would better
become it. Persons unskilled in guessing the
rebuses of nature, and who do not know what
trouble it costs to made the dumb speak, must
believe M. Tousseuel on his word of honour,
when he tells them that it took him ten
years of continual acquaintance with the bat,
and unheard of efforts of perseverance and
importunity, to cause it to unclose its teeth,
and make confession of all its vilenesses.

The bat is one of the few species which
enjoy the singular privilege of inspiring a
mortal antipathy at first sight, and of making
nervous people faint away. It shares this
melancholy faculty with the toad, the emblem,
of the beggar; the spider, the emblem of the
shopkeeper; and the viper, the emblem of
pertidy. Now, mark well this circumstance:
the bat is an innocent animal! That is the
solution of the whole enigma. The bat is
innocent, and more than innocent—it is
useful. It goes on with the services rendered
by the swallow, when they would otherwise
be interrupted by nightfall, and makes war
upon all nocturnal insects and vermin which
afflict humanity, and humanity's fruit-trees.
But, since this hideous creature, which is
gifted with supreme ugliness, and a supreme
faculty of repulsiveness, is still nothing but
an innocent, nay a useful animal; consequently
the fear of death—of that disquieting
transition—which has been instilled into our
minds, is nothing but an atrocious pleasantry,
by whose aid miserable impostors have
disgracefully profited by human credulity, and
made the most of purgatory. Happily, everything
is discovered with the day (analogy)
The bat, whom obscurant cheats had associated
with their dark designs, would not
have betrayed them, any more than their