harmony, when leather breeches will suffer
an immense reduction in price, in consequence
of the suppression of the gendarmerie. The
most favourable lot the goat can then expect
is to be banished to his native country, for
the purpose of repeopling the glaciers and
rocky precipices, in company with the vigogne,
the mouflon, and the chamois.

Lascivious, capricious, and easy-tempered,
addicted to vagabondage and sorcery, fond of
saltpetre, but a good daughter and a good
mother at the bottom of her heart, the she-goat
represents the thorough-bred gipsy, the
smart Esmeralda. Lament if you like, but
beware of endeavouring to avert the lot
which awaits Esmeralda and the goat. The
goat and her family may henceforth find
their appropriate place in the colonisation of
desert islands and uninhabitable mountains.
Under every latitude the goat and the rabbit
are undoubtedly the best agents which God
has given to man, for deriving some profit
from the barren rock.

Prudence forbids my speaking my mind on
the subject of the sheep and the lamb, which
you see folded there. I have very little
esteem for sheep-like people, who submit to
be shorn without resistance. Innocence,
candour, and resignation under suffering are
virtues which I do not desire to see too
common in France. It is high time that the
Iamb, and the poor working man, should
cease to play the part of victim. Therefore,
mind how you behave yourselves, ye cruel
butchers and iniquitous shepherds!

I do not value the tame rabbit in that
hutch, either for his flesh or for his habits,
which latter are tinged with cannibalism;
but I am pleased with his fecundity, his rapid
growth, and many other merits—with his
low price especially—permitting him to make
acquaintance with poor people's stomachs
who have no means of tasting butcher's meat.
The rabbit is the emblem of the poor labourer
who lives by working in quarries and mines,
a race which sometimes finds repose at the
bottom of its subterranean retreat, but liable
to be attacked by a thousand enemies the
moment it puts its nose above ground. It is
not gifted with foresight, like the hamster
and the squirrel, because the wages of the
workmen, whom it symbolises, are too low
for them to be able to lay by the least
fraction against a rainy day. The rabbit
sometimes kills its young. Every day, want
and profligacy drive the starving workwoman
to commit infanticide. This crime, so common
in the tribe of rabbits, happens more rarely
in the tribe of hares. The reason is, that
destitution is more frightful in manufacturing
towns than in agricultural districts. The
rabbit has made riots, and overthrown cities,
according to the account of Pliny. In
great towns the poor occasionally indulge
in the same amusement, but never in the
country, because they are not crowded close
enough together, to be able to compute
their own numbers and strength. In
Champagne I used to know a gamekeeper who
piped rabbits by means of a bird-call, in the
same way as is practised with robin
redbreasts, and which forced them out of
their burrows quicker than the ferret would.
The art of piping rabbits was practised in
Spain in very ancient times; the verb chellar
being coined to specify the process, which
was also not unknown in Provence.

Next you have a group of stinkards,
vermin whom I hold in abomination. Neither
the boar nor the stag is a scentless animal,
yet no one ever thought of applying the name
of stinkard to them. A. denomination so
gracefully characteristic has been reserved
for these lowest of beings, which hiding in
some subterranean retreat, and poisoning the
air with their odious effluvia, live by dangerless
murder and rapine. The polecat—the
best known type of the group which I style
"cut-throats" and " blood-drinkers"—the
polecat, and all the rest of its tribe, have
been gifted by the Creator with a membranous
pouch, situated close to the tail, and
secreting an odoriferous liquid. In the
stinkards of our own climate, this odour is
nothing worse than repulsive; but in the
species of Central America, known under the
significant name Mephitics, it is so horribly
and unbearably fetid as to suffocate and
poison those who breathe it. In that country,
there have been cases proved of persons being
killed in their beds by the odour of stinkards;
and it is sufficient for one of these creatures
merely to pass through a granary, a fruit-room,
or a cellar, to render every provision in
them uneatable, every beverage undrinkable.
Charitable souls will learn with delight that
the science of military engineering, the noble
art of legal destruction, has lately borrowed
a wrinkle from the stinkard in the practice
of distant poisoning. People in general are
not prepared for the surprise which awaits
them on the next declaration of hostilities
between absolutism and democracy. Bulletins
will not run in their usual style. Instead of
that, we shall read in the Gazette, "After
two hours' cannonading, at the distance of
fifteen hundred yards, the enemy fled in all
directions, abandoning their arms and their
cannon, and holding their noses. So complete
a victory was never attended with so little
bloodshed. The enemy fell, like brimstoned
bees, performing the most grotesque and
laughable contortions. Nose-witnesses
asserted that the infection from our howitzers
was such, that the air was tainted for the
distance of several miles. The successes of
the day may be in great part attributed to
the ingenious precaution which I had taken;
namely, to furnish each of our soldiers with
a pair of spectacles."

This blood-thirsty family includes the
animals which furnish the finest and the most
esteemed peltry; wherefore, stinkard-hunting
is an important affair, both in Siberia and in