174 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
pany, to attack, to pursue, to snap up tlie fish. It is rather more 
poetical than line fishing with gentles, and we may ask in behalf 
of the Chinese, however inferior to the civilized people of Europe 
in the art of bombarding cities and of massacreing men, whether 
the art of instructing beasts is not perhaps a higher one. Who is 
the barbarian, the brave commander of a French frigate, which, in 
order to give to a high personage of the Celestial Empire an idea 
of the power of his country, orders a parade of battle, and makes 
all his cannons thunder together ... or the Chinese, who remains 
completely insensible to the charms of this frightful hurly-burly ; 
who examines the compass attentively, while the brazen throats 
bellow, and whose impassive and sardonic countenance seems to 
ask if they have nothing less noisy and more spiritual to commu- 
nicate to him ? But we shall rouse the wrath of the doughty 
apologists of war, and of its heroism made to order at twenty-five 
centimes a day. 
The remarkable examples which the otter has given of his intel- 
ligence and docility whenever a fair trial has been made of these 
qualities, have not yet succeeded in opening the eyes of our poor 
fishermen, and they have declared upon the otter a war of exter- 
mination, instead of seeking to make use of his superior aptitudes. 
Then the otter, exasperated and forced to make reprisals, has 
on his side sworn hatred to man, and his most lively pleasure is to 
depopulate the ponds and streams. Some of them have been 
known, which as if with the desire of raising the jealous fury of 
the fisherman to a white heat, amused themselves with strewing 
every night his favorite haunts with the bones of immense carps 
and other fishes. 
One of the poacher’s most lively enjoyments is to poach under 
the beard of the police and the public order, when ho is protected 
against them by any barrier, a river for example. The otter which 
has often chanced to witness this manoeuvre, delights to imitate 
it. As it knows very nearly the range of a shot-gun, it amuses 
itself by sitting on the shore at a respectable distance from the 
marksman. It breakfasts familiarly before him, rolls on the sand, 
gambols. Some pretend to go to sleep at the noise of the firing. 
In these traits we recognize the emblem of “ Martial,” in the 
