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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
teacli us why there exist a number of animals like the shark and 
the tiger, the bedbug and the flea, which devour their monarch in- 
stead of serving him. The subject is poignant and painful, un- 
doubtedly, and I do not undertake it without extreme reluctance ; 
but how can one write a conscientious history of beasts without 
preceding it by an abridged notice on the creation ? 
No one knows how many ages the Earth has lived in the state 
of a comet. Only the pivots of systems preserve in their annals 
the remembrance of those primitive epochs of the stars they have 
implaned, as mothers the recollection of their babes’ first steps. 
The Earth not being yet in telegraphic communication with the 
high sidereal powers, I know not how certain documents on this 
subject can be obtained. 
The most accredited opinion gives as 15,000 years the duration 
of the cometary existence of this planet. I cannot guarantee its 
exact truth. 
We begin to know the mode of existence of those stars with 
long tresses which are the embryos of globes. It is at first a film 
of burning vapors which dart through space with a disordered 
course, and describe ellipses whose long diameters are immensely 
protracted — whose years are ages. The year is the complete rev- 
olution of any star around its pivot. The comets, which have not 
yet been sufficiently studied, are the vestalic corporation of the 
firmament. The comet is a fierce virgin, hostile to the relations of 
love, and who yields only at the last extremity to the attraction of 
some pivotal star v/hich forces her to implane herself, that is, to 
adjust herself to the sidereal gamut of some unfortunate cluster in 
quest of an absent note. 
We then see the almost rectilinear orbit of the rebel gradually 
inflect, s«jften, adopt the elliptical curve of planets, curve of love, 
with two convergent foci; then its fire vapors gradually condense 
in metallic masses, in oceans, in a humid atmosphere under the 
double pressure of ‘molecular attraction and of cooling ; then comes 
the unfolding of vegetable life, where already love has its sexes — 
where the humid lips of the stigma already solicit the kisses of the 
stamen, but where the stamen is yet obliged to borrow the wings 
of the breeze to transmit messages of love to the pistil. After the 
