ANALOGY OF THE RABBIT. 
353 
also as a school for marksmen for shooting the rabbit under 
brushwood, is one of those exercises which require most of alert- 
ness, quick sight, and skill on the part of the gunner. I shall not, 
however, do this inoffensive quadruped the honor of consecrating 
to it a very extensive place here, never having accustomed myself, 
in spite of my efforts of good will, to consider the rabbit as a 
beast of the chase. I thank it, as well as the guinea-pig and the 
swallow, for having diverted me in my painful childhood from 
the precepts of M. Lliomond, and the culture of Greek roots ; but 
this gratitude cannot blind me to the point of attributing to the 
rabbit merits which it has not. It is either shot before the dog, 
or caught in a net when expelled from its hole by the ferret. I 
have known a fellow in Champagne who piped the rabbit, and 
drew it out from its hole quicker than the ferret drives it. This 
art is of great antiquity in Spain, where the verb chillar has been 
invented to specify the procedure. It was not unknown in Pro- 
vence. The rabbit is the emblem of the poor industry, which lives 
by the exploitation of quarries and of mines ; a race which some- 
times finds repose at the bottom of its subterranean abodes, but 
on which its enemies rush as soon as it shows its nose in the air ; 
a race which has not been endowed, like the hamster and the 
squirrel, with the gift of foresight, because the wages of the in- 
dustry which it symbolizes are too small to allow the laborer to 
reserve a part for the future. 
The rabbit sometimes kills its little ones. Every day misery and 
debauch urge to infanticide the poor work-woman, who wrestles 
with famine. Infanticide, a common crime in the tribe of rab- 
bits, scarcely ever occurs in the tribe of hares. Because misery is 
more frightful in countries of manufactures than in countries of cul- 
ture. The rabbit has made disturbances and upset cities, as Pliny 
relates . . . The proletary of the cities sometimes gives himself 
this enjoyment, but not the field laborer, for there are not enough 
of them. And the neighborhood of the rabbit is fatal to the health 
of the hare as that of the proletary of industry to the country pop- 
ulations. 
