318 4 ILLUSTKATIVE NOTES. 



upon a few specimens very audacious. It is a hundred, nay, a thou- 

 sand to one, that so many millions of dead, once disinterred, will con- 

 vict us of having erred, at least, through incomplete enumeration. 



Page 113. Man had perished a hundred times. Here we trace 

 one of the early causes of the limited confederacy originally existing 

 between man and the animal a compact forgotten by our ungrateful 

 pride, and without which, nevertheless, the existence of man had 

 been impossible. 



When the colossal birds whose remains we are constantly exhuming 

 had prepared for him the globe, had subjugated the crawling, climbing 

 life which at first predominated when man came upon the earth to 

 confront what remained of the reptiles, to confront those new but not less 

 formidable inhabitants of our planet, the tiger and the lion he found 

 on his side the bird, the dog, and the elephant. 



At Alexandria may be seen the last few individuals of those 

 giant dogs which could strangle a lion. It was not through terror 

 that these formidable animals allied themselves with man, but 

 through natural sympathy, and their peculiar antipathy to the feline 

 race, the giant cat (the tiger or lion). 



Without the alliance of the dog against beasts of prey, and that 

 of the bird against serpents and crocodiles (which the bird kills in 

 the veiy egg), man had assuredly been lost. 



The useful friendship of the horse originated in the same cause. 

 You may trace it in the indescribable and convulsive horror which 

 every young horse experiences at the mere odour of the lion. He 

 attaches, he surrenders himself to man. 



Had he not possessed the horse, the ox, and the camel had he 

 been compelled to bear on his back and shoulders the heavy burdens 



