66 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
game, as the banks of the Seine, had little to envy those coun- 
tries of the European continent where it most abounds. 
At this epochj the urus, bull-giant of the forests of Gaul, lost 
honor of our climates, peacefully grazed in verdant meadows, 
where since have arisen the Louvre and the Institute, the Tuille- 
ries and the Palais Royal. 
The thick-necked elk, with legs like the giraffe ; the elk, whose 
branching horns shelter, under their immense roof, near the half of 
its body, drank at the pure waters of the Bievre. Heavy buffa- 
loes mired over in passing the isles of La Cite, of Louviers, of 
Saint Louis, immersed in the river to their chests, seemed like a 
flotilla of canoes, posted there to bar to Roman civilization the 
roads of Lutecia (from the Latin lutum, city of mud). The rein- 
deer, friend of the cold, dwelt on the same borders, seduced by the 
length of the winters, and the permanent brilliancy of six months 
snows. At this time, deep and dark forests, theatres of bloody 
sacrifices, covered with their somber green five sixths of the soil. Ev- 
ery valley had its repaire— every river and every rivulet its marsh. 
There countless herds of the wild hog, a fruitful race, rooted un- 
der the shade of old oaks. There yelled and growled the silver 
wolves (chat cervier), the panther of the north, and the lynx ; the 
blue-furred isatis, and the great black bear of Russia, rivals in pur- 
suit of the fallow deer. There bounded in herds more serried 
than the sheep on our plains, the stag, the buck, the hind, and the 
roebuck, and the treacherous glutton, concealed under the low 
branches of the colossal ash, awaited the passing elk to leap upon 
liis throat, to fasten his claws in the flesh, and to drink his blood. 
Meanwhile, the royal eagle, the gerfalcon, the shrike, the saker, 
the goshawk, furrowed the air with their wheeling flight. The 
porpoise sported in storms on the back of the Seine, virgin then of 
man^s bridges, but not of the dams of the beaver. 
The bird dear to Leda admired its white in the crystal of the 
wave, receiving on the right and left, in its majestic wake, testimo- 
nies of awe and veneration from a number of respectful palim- 
pedes. The solitude resounded every hour with battle-cries, sharp 
screams piercing from the sky, sinister howls, and death-notes pro- 
ceeding from the deepest recesses of the forest ! 
