146 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
These traveling rats are followed in their enaigrations by their 
habitual enemies, both quadrupeds and birds, as the shoals of her- 
rings and of mackerel attract in their suite the whale and shark. 
There are others which, like the brown rat and the large field-rat, 
abandon their country without thought of return, and establish 
their dw'ellings on the soil of conquered countries, as the Norman 
in Great Britain, the Mongolian in China. I lately heard through 
a diplomatist, in the way of all news, that the official advice of the 
return of the great field-rat to his natal country had just reached 
the Russian embassy. I come to the history of the rats of France. 
The mouse of France is indigenous; at least it is found in the 
dwellings of the Gauls up to our earliest records. The use of the 
cat, however, which replaces the ferret, began to be adopted in 
France only toward the commencement of the eleventh century. 
The ferret dates from the invasion of the rabbit and the Arab. 
Authorities abound to prove that the invasion of the Norman 
and that of the brown rat took place at the same time. The sur- 
mulot, the present rat of Paris, is of recent date in Europe, like 
the Muscovite, whence he comes. 
The Norman — ^lionorable source of the model English aristocra- 
cy — is the horde which has left in the woi ld the most frightful reputa- 
tion for barbarity. The Norman pirate has originated belief in the 
existence of the ogre. Long after the kings of France had pur- 
chased peace of Rollo, at the price of the rich province of Neu- 
stria, the people in its public prayers still entreated the good God 
to deliver them from evil and the Norman ; it is still the refrain of 
the public prayers of Ireland and of all those unhappy countries 
where the Norman rules. It is the terror of the Norman ferocity 
which forced the country people of France to take refuge under 
the protection of earls, and to build for them those strong castles 
where feudal tyranny installed itself and walled itself in for a thou- 
sand years. Thus so early did the Norman pirates scatter every- 
where on their passage oppression, misery, and ruin. I hear the voices 
of Portugal, Spain, India, and China crying that the blood of Rollo 
has not degenerated. The historians of the epoch agree in stating 
that the advent of the Normans was accompanied and followed by 
a swarm of atmospheric and zoological calamities of every sort. 
