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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
There is a question in the political world that has exercised our 
minds pretty sharply for several years past, the question of famine, 
otherwise called that of excessive population, or the problem of 
Malthus. The question is to know how the inhabitants of civilized 
Europe shall manage so as not to eat each other up within twen- 
ty years, if the population continue to increase as it has done, in 
frightful proportions, while the production of food destined to 
nourish this population, remains stationary. 
It is a problem that palpitates with interest, in proof of which 
Viscount Cormenin, who experiences the necessity to be of some use 
to humanity, has proposed a prize of twelve hundred francs to the 
person who should first solve it on this side the channel ; for it has 
already been resolved on the other. Yes, I have understood that 
it had begun to be solved in Great Britain ; that the economists of 
this eminently moral and philanthropic country, had proved that 
only the children of the rich possessed the right to live, although the 
child of the rich is born quite naked as well as the child of the poor 
man ; and that it was then agreed to place the laboring class un- 
der a discipline of moral constraint, and their little ones on a lau- 
danum diet. The system, we are assured, has already produced 
happy results. . . . But it is none the less evident that the solu- 
tion is not complete. • 
Passional analogy alone contains the secret of its integral solu- 
tion ; and if M. de Cormenin will hear me and be just, he will keep 
his twelve hundred francs for himself ; or rather, he will make a 
present of them to the double rose, because this flower had given 
the solution of Malthus’ problem long before the latter had re- 
ceived a name among men, because the double rose had said from 
the day after its invention by the Rhodians, that a flower which 
becomes double is a flower that transforms its stamens into petals^ 
and which consequently becomes barren by exuberance of sap and of 
richness. That is to say, viscount, that so long as misery shall 
continue increasing, the fecundity of the female sex will follow the 
same course ; and that but one method exists, of placing a curb on 
this continual prolification, viz. : to surround all women with the 
delights of luxury ^ comprising the incentives to attractive labor ^ 
since action invigorates the organism, and gives an edge to the en- 
