64 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
MAMMIFEROIJS QUADRUPEDS OF FRANCE. 
The mammiferous quadrupeds of France are about sixty-two in 
number, comprised in six series, arranged in their natural groups, 
and those of transition or ambiguous, in the following order : 
Porters (beasts of burden), Ruminants, Hunters (carnivorous). 
Proboscidians, Rodentia or Gnawers, Cheiropteria. Six families 
are commonly reckoned : Pachyderms, Solipedes, Ruminants, Car- 
nivora, Rodentia, and Insectivora. 
I have suppressed the pachyderms and the insectivora by my 
own authority, to make but one lamily, that of the Proboscidians. 
The series of Porters is that which the learned call the family 
of Solipedes. The Solipedes is not, in my opinion, one of the 
happiest terms of scientific genius : since it was generally agreed 
that Quadruped meant a four-footed beast, it was evident that 
Solipede could only mean a one-footed beast. I do not then well 
understand where the learned could have got the idea of creating 
a series of solipede quadrupeds, that is to say, of four-footed beasts 
having only one foot. 
Civilized science does not sufficiently avoid these facetiae which 
turn the laugh upon it. So with the barbarous name Pachyderm, 
given to the hog as well as to the elephant. Why Pachyderms ? 
Because the elephant and the hog have both of them very thick 
skins, I am answered, doubtless ; but is there not a still more 
prominent feature of union between the elephant and the hog? 
Has not each of these species an organ more apparent and more 
characteristic than the thickness of the skin, and giving a better 
proof of their relationship in origin, a snout, a trunk for example ? 
Well ! I say that this formidable development of the olfactive 
apparatus, which reveals to me the pivotal passions of these 
beasts, is the true sign that ought to connect them. I decorate 
the series then with the name of this common organ, and I call it 
the series of Proboscidians or trunk bearers. 
And as I know the meaning of the snout, by analogy, I have 
the pleasure of knowing in advance that I have to do with the 
most sensual, the ugliest, and the most voracious tribe of beings 
in the creation, to the series of gluttons, par excellence. Who 
