PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
lose the traditions of their art. The associative order was the 
whole secret of the industrial superiority of the beaver in both 
worlds. From the day that the beaver of F ranee had to renounce the 
societary order, there has been an end of his boasted skill, as of 
the strength of Samson after the stroke of Dalilah’s scissors. 
Association vivifies, isolation kills. The French beaver, now 
hiding along the too thickly settled shores of the Fhone and the 
Garden, vegetates there deplorably, unremittingly pursued by man, 
and assailed by perpetual terrors. What human brain, however 
firmly cast, could resist for centuries the brutifying influence of such 
a life ! 
Isolation has killed the beaver of France. From degradation 
to degradation, the noble, interesting creature has morally passed 
to the state of a water-rat. The successive stages of his earth still 
betrays the studies of the ancient engineer; but if he sometimes 
remembers his ancient talent of miner, carpenter, and mason, it is 
to employ it for the destruction of the ditches and causeways made 
by man. Sad and sterile vengeance ! 
The fortune of the French beaver reveals to us that of the fu- 
ture reserved to the beaver of America, for an epoch more or less 
distant. I have heard it said that the intelligence of this superior 
species had already undergone a mortal attaint from persecution. 
Great and holy lesson for men ! Solemn confirmation of that 
high truth, that the misery and brutalization of the laborer are 
fatal consequences of every separated industry. 
How many ages have elapsed since the generous race of fal- 
cons, whose stomach the cadaverous odor of cities sickens, has de- 
serted the air of Paris ! Even at the epoch of the crusades, that is to 
say, at the earliest period of French falconry, falconers complain of 
the scarcity of falcons in France, and are forced to draw their sub- 
jects from Greece, from Norway, and from Scotland. Now the 
French atmosphere belongs in full sovereignty to black bands of 
jackdaws, crows, starlings, and ringdoves. From his city dwell- 
ing, the observer perceives in the air only the rare and rapid sweep 
of the large turret swallow, or the capricious evolutions of pigeons, 
or the heavy sailing of night-birds around old belfries. It is evi- 
dent by the preceding table that the property of civilization is ev 
