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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
It is a very curious thing that the principles of property and of • 
morality have never had warmer partisans than among the pil- 
laging nations, the professional robber peoples, such as the Eng- 
lish and the Romans. 
But the delicious temperature of the oceanic isles cannot give 
even an approximative idea of the temperature which the earth 
enjoyed in the Eden period. For at this time the Earth paraded, 
resplendent with pride, amid a pompous cortege of satellites, and 
the glorious Creature crushed poor Jupiter with her luxury. At 
this time five moons escorted her — Mercury, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, 
Phebe (the moon) — five moons, bright, young, ardent, gifted with 
an energetic power of aromal absorbtion and resorbtion, and whose 
principal office was to refine the aromas of their cardinal planet? 
and to communicate to all their vegetable productions an exqui- 
site flavor and exhilarating properties. And these five brilliant 
moons, each shaded with a different color like so many Bengal 
fires, served perpetually to illuminate her nights, and gave to the 
starry vault of that time a softened lustre, a religious charm that 
no tongue of poet now can describe. And the star bore on her 
brow, in sign of her power, a radiant crown, a boreal crown 
whose beneficent aspiration absorbed the excess of caloric in the 
equatorial zone, to distribute it with art over the vast surface of 
the boreal continent, where the mildness of an eternal spring 
reigned, and the Polar elephant cantered at his ease over flowery 
carpets. And the Earth, aided in her work by the affectionate 
concurrence of all her satellites and all the stars of the solar sys- 
tem, gave birth each day to some new production, added some 
new term to her series — animal, vegetable, and mineral. 
Here some vexatious fellow interrupts me to object that this 
new aspect of paradisaical existence is not in conformity with the 
ideas generally received in the world, with the ideas of Genesis. I 
reply that I know of no human folly which does not father itself 
on some sacred text. I am encouraged by remembering that since 
the time of Galileo the Earth has obtained the Bible’s permission 
to turn round the Sun, which was formerly otherwise ; fathers be- 
sides, in our day, are no longer commanded to cut the throats of 
their own children. 
