62 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
nary Eutopias. The only question, in fact, is that of acclimating a 
number of new species, and of multiplying those which are indig- 
enous. 'Now Bakewell, the greatest man that England has pro- 
duced — Bakewell, the sublime artist who entered so deep in the 
secrets of the Creator — who made living flesh as plastic under the 
hands of the rearer as clay in the fingers of the potter — Bakewell, 
to whom pagan Greece would have built altars, has resolved prob- 
lems much more impossible, and given reality to dreams far more 
chimerical. 
A true friend of animals — one of the masters best beloved of 
science— -Isidore Geoffroi St. Hilaire, has formerly presented to his 
government, which will take no account of it, a memoir of extreme 
interest, in which it is proved that France can no longer dispense 
with founding a menagerie of acclimation in the south of France. 
Because the shameless French government prefers to occupy itself 
in furbishing arms for its good friends, the Jesuits of Switzerland, 
to acclimating the Alpaca or the Tapir in France, it is no reason 
why I should suppress my warm approval of the conclusions of 
the above-mentioned memoir. I expected no less from an heir of 
the illustrious name of Geoffroi St. Hilaire, from the true learned 
man — from the professor of high title, who marches so happily in 
the paths of paternal glory. 
Alas! the transcendentalism of subjecting the laborer by au- 
thority of a paternal power to a daily diet of roast game ! 
How could I so far have forgotten the political principles of 
present governments and of the time in which we live? 
The time in which we live, it is the year of misery and famine 
(1847). While I am writing these lines (20th of Januaiy), sheer 
death rages over populations ; cold and hunger reap with double 
. strokes in the proletary ranks ; parish relief stops paralyzed be- 
fore the immense devouring gulf of necessity. The rich man hides 
himself, and trembles at the aspect of so much suffering, and cap- 
ital, in its fear, answers by decrees of death the paroxysms of 
despair, the maddened misery of famished laborers. 
For protection against all this suffering, governmental provi- 
dence has placed the ministry of agriculture in the hands of a 
cloth manufacturer, completely a stranger to game and to crops, 
