ORDER CARNASSIER. 393 



image of a beneficent power perpetually engaged in the 

 destruction of those noisome and dangerous reptiles which 

 propagate with such terrible rapidity in hot and humid 

 climates. The Ichneumon is led by its instinct, and ob- 

 viously destined by its peculiar powers, to the destruction of 

 animals of this kind. Not that it dares to attack Croco- 

 diles, Serpents, and the larger of the Lizard tribe by open 

 force, or when these creatures have arrived at their com- 

 plete development. It is by feeding on their eggs that the 

 Ichneumon reduces the number of these intolerable pests. 

 The Ichneumon, from its diminutive size and timid dispo- 

 sition, has neither the power to overcome nor the courage 

 to attack such formidable adversaries. Nor is it an anL 

 mal of the most decidedly carnivorous appetite. Urged by 

 its instinct of destruction, and guided at the same time by 

 the utmost prudence, it may be seen at the close of day 

 gliding through the ridges and inequalities of the soil, fix- 

 ing its attention on every thing that strikes its senses, with 

 the view of evading danger or discovering prey. If chance 

 favours its researches, it never limits itself to the momen- 

 tary gratification of its appetite : it destroys every living 

 thing within its reach, which is too feeble to offer it any 

 effectual resistance. It particularly seeks after eggs, of 

 which it is extremely fond, and through this taste it proves 

 the means of destruction to so many Crocodiles. That it 

 enters the mouth of this animal when asleep is as much 

 true as that it attacks it when awake. This is either a 

 fable which never had any foundation, or, like other mira- 

 cles and marvels, it has ceased in our unbelieving and less 

 favoured era. The time when animals abounded with the 

 strangest generic mixtures, and the most extraordinary 

 propensities, when every grove and every stream were 

 haunted by natures in which the divinity and the brute were 

 incongruously commingled, has long gone by. The well- 

 spring of faith, the grand source of the miraculous, is 



