168 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
tion for separation. Suppress the separation of properties, which 
is the goose that lays golden eggs, for chicanery and usury ; and 
the subtile pleader, the false interpreter of the code, the issuer of 
stamped paper, must all shut up shop. 
Let us change the five hundred miserable dwellings, which the 
civilized village boasts, into one splendid palace ; let us replace 
the five hundred barns, covered with thatch, full of holes, and 
giving way everywhere, into a single vast barn, containing the 
provisions of the town, the excellence and security of vhose con- 
struction is guaranteed by the magnitude of the combined interest, 
and whose various departments are carefully watched over by tlie 
most competent agents. Then all those filthy beasts which bit- 
ten by the ruin of the laborer — skunks, rats, weavils — disappear. 
It is evident that the question of the skunk, and that of all the 
vampires and parasites, is the same ; that these different scourges 
have at the same time invaded the social body ; that they have 
issued from the same origin, antagonism ; and this cause ceasing, 
its effect will cease with it. I await the death of the last polecat, 
to pronounce the funeral oration of the last thief. 
In other words, I wait till the association of proprietors has 
broken down those old walls and those thick hedges which sep- 
arate inheritances, and which serve as retreats to the evil beasts, 
to the attorneys of law, and the usurers ; to the insatiable vam- 
pires of the simple-minded laborer, to the parasites of the granary. 
In the long leisures of my farming life, I have often treated 
myself to a chase of the beech marten over ladders, joists, and 
roofs. Those who have never assisted in this amusement, of which 
George Sand has given an admirable account in her “ Mauprat,'' 
cannot form an idea of the degree of dexterity and of intelligence 
to which a dog, well backed, will attain. 
I have seen setters, grown tired of idleness, make themselves 
useful in trailing the beech marten through barns, and succeed 
pretty well after eight or ten trials. But the setter has neither the 
proper size, make, or habits requisite to bear away the bell in this 
sort of steeple-chase, or feat of acrobatics. The genuine marten 
dog is a little brown or black pug, with a sprightly air, a straight 
ear — of unknown genealogy — therefore the scion of some noble race. 
