56 



HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 



which we wage against nature. We destroy the very birds 

 that protect our crops — our guardians, our honest labourers 

 — which, following close upon the plough, seize the future 

 I I pest, which the heedless peasant disturbs only to replace in 



the earth. 

 Whole races, valuable and interesting, perish. Those lords of ocean, 

 those wild and sagacious creatures which Nature has endowed with 

 blood and milk — I speak of the cetacea — to what number are they 

 reduced ! Many great quadrupeds have vanished from the globe. 

 Many animals of every kind, without utterly disappearing, have 

 recoiled before man ; bnitalized (ensauvag^s) they fly, they lose their 

 natural arts, and relapse into barbarism. The heron, whose pnidence 

 and address were remarked by Aristotle, is now, at least in 

 Europe, a misanthropical, naiTow-minded, half-foolish animal. The 

 beaver, which, in America, in its peaceful solitudes, had become 

 a great architect and engineer, has grown discouraged ;* to-day 

 it has scarcely the heart to excavate a burrow in the earth. The 

 hare, so gentle, so handsome, distinguished by its fur, its swiftness, 

 its wonderful delicacy of ear, will soon have disappeared ; the few 

 of its kind which remain are positively embrated. And yet the 



* Compare the interesting descriptions of the huge dams erected by beavers across the 

 American rivers, in Milton and Cheadle's valuable narrative of travel, " The North- West 

 Passage by Land." — Translator. 



