108 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY, 
ment of his rights — fruits of his labor. He is a friend of order and 
of peace at any price — a faithful subscriber to the price-current 
journals, and exact in his payments. The mule draws much more 
from his father the ass, than from his mother the mare, in his in- 
tellectual faculties. Although less adventurous and more reflect- 
ive than the horse, he is more headstrong and obstinate in his re- 
bellions against justice, and there is little hope of his making an 
auto-da-fe of. his title-deeds of property, as the horse did of his 
title-deeds of nobility one night of the 4th of August. In regard 
to literature and to exhibitions, he desires above all, like the ass 
and the peasant, the melodrame and the guillotine. Posterity will 
not pardon him for having voted the death of the famished Bu- 
zancais. The mule — emblem of mercantile feudalism, emblem of 
the vain and obstinate citizen — has not been destined by God to 
beget offspring, and continue his race. May His holy name be 
blessed therefor.'^ 
* The mule is not absolutely barren, since the female can conceive and 
bear young by copulation with the male mule, the stallion, and the ass. It 
is the race which is subject to barrenness, since it cannot perpetuate itself in- 
definitely by its females, and its fecundity stops at the third or fourth genera- 
tion. The learned who have been occupied with this question of the mixed 
race, have been embarrassed by the want of just conceptions of the power of 
man. Man may modify and ameliorate created species by their adaptation 
with his wants. The mule, which is a product of art or of human creation, 
ought to possess, in this title of character, neutrality of sex and aptitude 
for all services. Thus, the mixed breeds of the pheasant with the common 
fowl, fatten as easily as capons, and fill with still greater complaisance the 
function of hatching eggs, completely forgetting their sex. The flesh of the 
mule is much preferable to that of the horse, and might become juicy if it 
were reared for that purpose ; nor would the mule ever have thought of his 
sex had not the learned experienced the necessity of busying themselves 
about it on his account. 
The mule, who is no fool, knows perfectly well that his race is stricken 
with infecundity, and does not try to revolt against the condemnation of fate. 
Now when he so philosophically and spontaneously renounces love and its 
troubles, it is not worth our while to fill his head with chimeras, and deceive 
him with the hope of a fabulous posterity. 
