216 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
gilimate excuses for all the pleasures of the senses ; as if it were 
possible for the poor to bring moderation to the enjoyment of the 
only pleasure that the rich has not yet forbidden to him. 
Ah ! morality is easy to you, rich impotents, satiated with the 
enjoyments of lust, who can purchase with your gold the caresses 
and the flesh of the daughter of the people, then abandon her 
with your passing caprice; but let the stag drink at your trough 
and make a harem for him — you will see that he will no longer 
scandalize you with his excesses. 
He who drinks the best wine at his pleasure is not apt to get 
drunk. 
The stag has never meditated, I presume, over the lesson of dis- 
cretion inflicted by the chaste Diana on the hunter Acteon ; but I 
ask, What is there perfect in this world ? Samson, Hercules, and 
M. De Turenne were noble heroes, and love also ruined them. Love 
is the passion of great hearts. The deer is spread over all the 
globe in different species, and has for enemies all the great flesh- 
eaters, the canine and feline races especially. In Persia and India 
it is hunted with the ounce, a charming species of tiger, that is 
trained like a greyhound. I do not know that it is any where 
hunted with birds, like the gazelle. Pliny, however, asserts that 
in his day the eagles made havoc among the stags — first hurting 
their sight with the dust of their wings, and afteiwvard gouging 
their eyes out. The lammergeyer of the Pyrenees and Alps has 
been accused of the same procedure to destroy the isard and the 
chamois. I shall not dispute the testimony of Pliny, although 
many things in natural history took place in the time of this writer 
which have not since been observed. 
I have seen magpies and crows pursue leverets in our fields and 
pick out their eyes. The white falcon of Africa, which is no big- 
ger than a pigeon, attacks the gazelle, and I do not see why the 
eagle and the lammergeyer should not attack the stag or the cha- 
mois in case of emergency. In the forests of the North, where the 
stag disappears to give place to the elk and the reindeer, the prin- 
cipal enemies of these two races are the wolf, the glutton, and the 
panther ; the wolf, which runs them down like the dog, the glut- 
ton and panther, which prefer to lie in ambush among the thick 
