232 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
filth of forests, fields, and farm-yards, and converts the refuse of 
the kitchen, the garden, and the dairy, into succulent meat. The 
hog is the great scavenger of nature ; he fattens at nobody’s 
expense. 
For this end God has made him omnivorous, and endowed him 
with that voracity so much censured. Without this voi acity tim 
animal would not have been apt to content himself with what all 
others refuse, and to make fat out of all. Had he been delica(e 
of his nourishment, like tlm horse, it is evident that he could not 
have fulfilled his mission as a scavenger. And what proves very 
clearly that the poor beast accomplishes a function of devotion on 
this earth when it rummages the filth and plows up the soil, is 
that it is eminently sensible iri person to the charms of the tepid 
bath and of cleanness. It is well known that of all domestic an- 
imals, the hog is the only one that fears to soil with its dung the 
litter where it sleeps. The horse and the dog which have such 
pretty manners, are not up to this delicacy. 
The miser dreads death which must separate him from his 
treasures, sole objects of his affections. As he has practiced usury 
and pillaged his neighbor all his life without ever obliging him, he 
is in no hurry to render unto God an account of his works here 
below; the hog also sees the approach of death- with terror, and 
abjures his fate with horrible grunts. The anger of the wild boar 
at bay is rage in its highest paroxysm. 
Xenophon and Pollux have written that at such moments, the 
teeth of the boar grew so hot that the hide of the dogs w^as 
scorched where the}^ had struck. 
I have already observed that the Greek historians always em- 
broidered their stories very pleasantly. I have in the course of 
my life seen many enraged wild boars in France and in Africa, 
but I confess that I have never succeeded in lighting my cigar at 
their tusks. 
As the death of the miser, who has never done good to any one, 
fulfills the most ardent hopes of his family, thus the day when tlie 
hog is killed is the feast day for the proprietors, his neighbors and 
friends. 
It is the time when the flesh of the victim is to indemnify the 
