ORDER CARNASSIER. 857 



that some travellers speak of the disagreeable odour it ex- 

 hales, while others affirm the reverse. The affirmation 

 refers to the Common Chacal, the negation to this spe- 

 cies. M. Fred. Cuvier proposes to call this new Chacal, 

 Afithus, the name of a family in Arcadia, an individual of 

 which was every year metamorphosed into a Wolf, accord- 

 ing to Pliny. 



We shall now, as an appendage to the Chacals, speak of 

 some mules, the result of an intercourse between the two 

 last-mentioned species. 



The assemblage of individuals, whose copulation is pro- 

 lific, constitutes a species, and the exact knowledge of spe- 

 cies is the basis of Natural History. As individuals them- 

 selves are the work of nature, so likewise are the relations 

 in which they stand towards each other. Indeed nature ap- 

 pears to attach more importance to those relations, than to 

 the individuals which are placed in them. The continuance 

 of a species is evidently an object of greater consequence 

 with her, than the preservation of each or any of the ani- 

 mals which compose it ; and, in truth, the principal cause 

 of the formation of the latter seems to be the conservation 

 of the former. In some of the living tribes, individuals 

 are called into existence obviously for no other purpose. 

 The entire of their ephemeral life is comprised in birth, 

 reproduction, and death. They propagate their kind, and 

 then return to nothing. Nature demands nothing but the 

 preservation of the species, and in contributing to that, 

 their destiny is completely fulfilled. 



There are few phenomena, therefore, more worthy of the 

 attention of the philosopher, than the reproduction of spe- 

 cies, and that independently of the mystery of fecundation, 

 This truth was felt by the illustrious Buffon, and if he has 

 not been invariably consistent in the application of the 

 general rule which he himself laid down, it was from the 

 want of facts which might lead him to appreciate the 



