1 64 WOLF-HUNTING. 



CHAPTER XV. 



No matter how wild and attractive the sport of wolf and boar- 

 hunting may be, followed as it still is in Lower Brittany after the 

 fashion of a bygone age, with hound and horn of ancient style, 

 and customs of venery elsewhere unknown, nevertheless the bare 

 subject, however seasoned with adventure, will at length pall on 

 the sense, and become intolerable even to the strongest appetite. 

 The course of nature itself is one of perpetual change and 

 marvellous variety ; and man, if he has one instinct beyond that 

 which he exhibits in ten minutes after his birth, namely, searching 

 for something to sustain life, certainly shows it in his crave for 

 change. Harping on the same string, even though touched by 

 the finger of a Paganini, pleases only as a passing charm ; and 

 he of the Sabine farm warns us that the feast too often repeated 

 grows bitter* in the end. 



Therefore on this ground a digression from the forest to the 

 sea-shore from the musical thunder of Kergoorlas' pack to the 

 loud-sounding roar of the restless Atlantic will not, probably, 

 be unacceptable to the general reader. The little seaport of 

 Concarneau, however, to which he is now introduced, possesses 

 a Marine Observatory, in the waters of which a great variety of 

 sea-fish not only seem " to live at home at ease," but to disport 



* " Nempe inamarescunt epulce sine fine petitae." 



