242 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
ly covered with boughs of trees, and garnished within with a soft 
carpet of dried grasses. 
These sows are excellent mothers, attentive, fond, and bold. I 
have seen in my childhood acts of devotion in some of them that 
might figure admirably in the treatise of “ Morality in Action.’’ 
To avert the dangers with which the importunity of the wolf 
threatens her family, the sows of Ardennes and of Meuse have the 
custom of establishing around their sty a cordon sanitaire, or or- 
ganized protective union of beasts in a company. 
Some of these sentinels weigh one hundred and seventy pounds, 
and are armed in a fashion to make their countersign respected. 
The individuals of this race are usually strongly disposed to the 
spirit of association. They lend each other effectual aid in emer- 
gencies. I had counted in Algiers on the hosts of these populous 
deserts to indemnify us for the disappearance of the French wild 
boar. Vain and fragile hope ! They have killed all already. 
I have, however, been so happy as to have seen Algiers in its 
days of splendor, when the scourge of war raged over devastated 
Mitidja, and when the orders of chiefs retained in our camps our 
captive garrisons. War among men is rest and happiness among 
the beasts! 
If the game of France is not ungrateful, the memory of Napo- 
leon ought to be dear to it. At the epoch of which I speak, the 
wild boar of Algiers, delivered from the neighborhood of the in- 
digenous tribes, multiplied luxuriously throughout the level coun- 
try. Not a copse, somewhat thick with vines or wild lucerne, but 
concealed some powerful family. The corridors that wild boars 
pierced in this brushwood, impenetrable to the dog and to man, 
told us in advance when the place was inhabited. We had, be- 
sides, to accompany us in these dangerous hunts, a group of Arab 
horsemen, a race of men whom nature has treated too favorably, 
and who combine with the strength and superiority of the Cen- 
taur, a canine subtlety of sight and smell. With these sleuth- 
hounds, and in this blessed land, it would have needed too much 
good-will on our part to have found the bush empty. What was 
difficult in Algiers, was not to turn the beast, but to make it leave 
cover. In regard to the game of this country, I know only the 
