ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 323 



Page 15 7. The useful equilibrium of life and death. — Numerous 

 species of birds no longer make a halt in France. One with difficulty 

 descries them flying at inaccessible elevations, deploying their wings 

 in haste, accelerating their passage, saying,- — ■" Pass on, pass on 

 quickly ! Let us avoid the land of death, the land of destruction !" 



Provence, and many other departments in the south, are barren 

 deserts, peopled by every living tribe, and therefore vegetable 

 nature is sadly impoverished. You do not interrupt with impunity 

 the natural harmonies. The bird levies a tax on the plant, but he is 

 its protector. 



It is a matter of notoriety that the bustard has almost disappeared 

 from Champagne and Provence. The heron has passed away ; the 

 stork is rare. As we gi-adually encroach upon the soil, these species, 

 partial to dusty wastes and morasses, depart to seek a livelihood else- 

 where. Our progress in one sense is our poverty. In England the 

 same fact has been observed. (See the excellent articles on Sport 

 and Natural History, translated from Messrs. St. John, Knox, Gosse, 

 and others, in the Revue Britannique.) The heath-cock retires before 

 the step of the cultivator ; the quail passes into Ireland. The ranks 

 of the herons grow daily thinner before the utilitarian imjyrovements 

 of the nineteenth century. But to these causes we must add the 

 barbarism of man, which so heedlessly destroys a throng of innocent 

 species. Nowhere, says M. Pavie, a French traveller, is game more 

 timid than in our fields. 



Woe to the ungrateful people ! And hy this phrase I mean the 

 sporting crowd who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to 

 animals, have exterminated innocent life. A terrible sentence of the 

 Creator weighs upon the tribes of sportsmen, — they can create nothing. 



