ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 825 
that where the bird is least exposed to slaughter. The land of William 
Tell knew how to place before her children a juster and more exalted 
object when they liberated their country. 
France is not cruel. Why, then, this love of murder, this exter- 
mination of the animal world ? 
It is the impatient people, the young people, the childish people, 
in a rude and restless childhood. If they cannot be doing in creating, 
they will be doing by destroying. 
But what they most fatally injure is—themselves! <A violent, 
education, stormily impassioned in love or severity, crushes in the 
child, withers, chokes up the first moral flower of natural sensitiveness, 
all that was purest of the maternal milk, the germ of universal love 
which rarely blooms again. 
Among too many children we are saddened by their almost incred- 
ible sterility. A few recover from it in the long circle of life, when 
they have become experienced and enlightened men. But the first 
freshness of the heart? It shall return no more.* 
How is it that this nation, otherwise born under such felicitous 
circumstances, is, with rare and local exceptions, accursed with sv 
singular an incapacity for harmony? It has its own peculiar songs, 
its charming little melodies of vivacity and mirth. But it needs a 
prolonged effort, a special education, to attain to harmony. 
Page 158. Flattening of the brain.—The weight of the brain, 
compared with that of the body, is, in the 
Ostrich, in thewratio of -. cscs castes sie esac onenrgeciascasseecseses Ito 1200 
(GO08G).. <aduisncisdasie uisctaeseeseeestasiona sel ts ae marOaeusemmann Dito 860 
Duck, daluifenabicndhddlanetiats siuetacbueaiimensed  hOr, 20 
Hag 1G 9 onccani cans ene uals. 2G seyeaesbatnscometan Manas omen aeemun enact ienes sol, tO OO) 
* Compare Byron, in “ Don Juan.” 
