312 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
dinal, and condition sine qua non of the restoration of her paradi- 
saical temperature. 
But sometimes also discouragement seizes her, and dark ideas 
traverse her brain when she returns to the memory of the past, and 
thinks of the years that still separate her from the day when she 
shall re-enter her glory, and resume the interrupted course of her 
Cieations. 
Sometimes these attacks of marasmus are so much prolonged 
that the very life of the planet has been called in question. 1 
know of no globe whose infancy has been so painful as that of ihe 
earth, and which has been so often despaired of. The two most 
dangerous crises which history has recorded are those coincident 
with Caesar’s death, and with the end of the last century. The 
earth has not yet recovered from this recent shock. 
Report has even spread that the question'of amputating the sick 
planet had formerly been seiiously agitated in the great council of 
the sidereal firmament on occasion of the late epidemic among the 
Irish potatoes. 
I indulge the idea that this resolution is quite premature, and 
that these reports have been designedly circulated by the friends of 
the earth who wished to inspire fear, and to induce her through 
intimidation to -throw her philosophy and her philosopliers over- 
board. So mote it be ! It is certain that the earth’s incapacity 
to furnish to the Sun her contingent of tetra-cardinal aroma is for 
tbe whole solar series a cause of legitimate irritation and a grave 
humiliation, and the poor patient is not alone in suffering for 
her abandonment. It remains to be seen how much longer false 
morality will abuse our patience to prolong the disgrace of the 
earth ! 
The preceding exposition implicitly narrates the miseries and the 
omissions of the last creation ; No. 3. Evil there predominates, 
and the subversive characters form the general rule, the harmonic 
characters (species useful to man) the exception. 
There are families, such as that of the Felines, as that of Ser- 
pents, which do not count a single species frankly allied with man ; 
and out of a mass of perhaps 100,000 species of insects, three or 
four at the utmost, have up to this time consented to work for us. 
