Part 2

In my former history of this animal, I remarked there were cats in China, whose ears were pendant, but as this variety is not found in any other place, it is possibly an animal of a different species; and I am led to this supposition from there being an animal called _Sumxu_, mentioned by travellers, which they say they can compare to nothing but the cat, which it greatly resembles. It is found among the Chinese, who are extremely partial to it, both on account of its beauty, its hair being of a bright black or yellow colour, and because it readily destroys rats.

We have also another variety of cats in our own climates; as there are some produced with pencils at their ears. M. de Save writes me word, that in November, 1773, he had a young kitten brought forth at his house in Paris, very like what we have described as a Spanish cat, with pencils at her ears, although neither of the parents had them, and that in a few months they were as large in proportion to her size as those of a Canadian lynx. At Madagascar they have tamed some wild cats which have twisted tails, and are called _Saca_ by the inhabitants; but they intermix with the domestic, and are of course of the same species. I have had the skin of an animal sent me from Cayenne, which much resembles a wild cat. They call it Haïra in Guiana, and the natives there eat its flesh, which is white and palatable; I therefore suspect a mistake has been made in its name, and that it is the Taïra, a small martin, of which notice is taken in the latter part of this work.

CHAP. III.

OF WILD ANIMALS.

In the History of Man, and of Domestic Animals, we have seen Nature solely as she is constrained; we have rarely seen her perfect, often altered and deformed, and always either surrounded with shackles or loaded with extraneous ornaments. We shall now behold her decked out by simplicity alone, but more attractive by her artless beauty, by her free air, by the sprightliness of her movements, and by all the other attributes of true dignity and independence. We shall behold her traversing the surface of the earth with sovereign sway, portioning her domain among the other animals, and dividing to each species its element, climate, and subsistence; we shall survey her in the forests, in the waters, and in the plains, dictating her simple but immutable laws; imprinting upon every species her indelible characters; dispensing her gifts with equity, and counter-balancing evil with good; we shall observe her giving to some strength and courage accompanied with hunger and voracity; to others mildness, temperance, and agility, attended with fear, inquietude, and timidity; and to all liberty, with uniformity of manners, and ardour in love, which they can easily satisfy, and is always followed by a happy fecundity.

Love and liberty, what blessings! Have those animals which we call _savage_, because they are not subjected to our will, need of aught more to make them happy? If so, they enjoy another blessing, that of living in a state of equality; they are neither the slaves nor tyrants of each other; the individual has not, like man, to dread the rest of his species; they enjoy peace among themselves, and are strangers to war, but when brought on them by other animals or men. No wonder then that they should shun the human race, steal from our view, live in solitudes remote from our habitations, employ all the resources of their instinct to provide for their safety; and in order to exempt themselves from the power of man, that they should exert every expedient of that liberty which Nature has bestowed on them, together with the desire of independence.

Some animals, and they are the most mild, innocent, and tranquil, are contented with remaining at a certain distance from us, and living in our fields; others more fierce and distrustful, conceal themselves in the recesses of woods; others, as if they knew there was no safety on the surface of the earth, dig themselves subterraneous abodes, take shelter in caverns, or gain the summits of most inaccessible mountains; and others, the most ferocious and most powerful, inhabit deserts only, and reign like sovereigns in those burning climates, where man, as savage as themselves, is unable to dispute the empire with them.

As all beings, even the most independent, are subjected and governed by physical laws, and as brute animals, as well as man, experience the influences of the air and soil, so it appears, that the same causes which have softened and civilized the human species in our climates, have produced similar effects upon all other species. The wolf, which is perhaps the most ferocious animal in the temperate zone, is by no means so terrible or cruel as the tiger, the panther, and the lion of the torrid zone; or as the white bear, the lynx, and the hyæna of the frozen zone. And this difference is not only general, as if Nature, to give a degree of harmony to her productions, had calculated the climate for the species, or the species for the climate, but in each particular species the climate is calculated for the manner, and the manners for the climate. In America, where the heat is less violent, and the air and soil more benign than in Africa, though under the same line, the lion, tiger, and panther, have nothing terrible in them but the name. They are no longer tyrants of the forests, intrepid enemies of mankind, monsters which delight in blood and carnage: but they usually run from before man, and instead of waging open war even against other animals, employ stratagem and artifice to take them by surprise; in a word, they may be rendered subservient and almost domestic; therefore were ferocity and cruelty the characteristic of their natures, they must have degenerated, or rather felt the influence of the climate; under a milder sky their dispositions have become milder; every excess in them has been tempered, and by these changes they have become more conformable to the nature of the country which they inhabit.

The vegetables which cover this earth and are more connected with it than the animal that feeds upon them, partake in a superior degree of the nature of the climate. Every country, every degree of temperature, has its particular plants. At the foot of the Alps we find those of France and Italy, and on their summit those of the northern regions, which very plants we also meet with on the frozen pinnacles of the African mountains. On the south side of the mountains which separate the Mogul empire from the kingdom of Cashmire, we see all the plants of the Indies, and on the other side we are surprised to find none but those of Europe. It is from intemperate climates that we also derive drugs, perfumes, poisons and all the plants whose qualities are excessive. The productions of temperate climates, on the contrary are always mild. Of such happy spots, herbs and roots the most wholesome, the sweetest fruits, the gentlest animals and the most polished men, are the delightful appurtenances. Thus the earth produces plants, the earth and plants make animals, and of the earth, plants, and animals, are formed men; for the qualities of vegetables, proceed immediately from the soil and air; the temperament and other relative qualities of animals which feed on herbs, have a close affinity to the particular kinds they use, and the physical qualities of men, and other animals which subsist on flesh, as well as on vegetables, depend, though more remotely, on the same causes, whose influence extends even to disposition and manners. Size and form, which appear to be absolute and determined qualities, depend, nevertheless, like the relative qualities upon the influence of the climate. The size of our largest animals are greatly inferior to that of the elephant, rhinoceros, or hippopotamus; our largest birds are but small if we compare them with the ostrich, condor, or the cassowary; and what comparison can be made between the fishes, lizards, and serpents of our regions, and the whale, the walrus, and manati, which inhabit the northern seas; or the crocodiles, large lizards, and enormous adders which infest the southern climes, both by land and water? And if we consider each species in different climates, we shall find sensible varieties both in size and figure, as we have already evinced in the history of the horse, goat, hog, and dog. These changes are, however, produced but slowly and imperceptibly; the grand workman of nature is Time, and his operations are equal, uniform, and regular; he performs nothing by starts; nothing but by degrees, by shades, and by succession; and what he does, however imperceptible at first, becomes gradually sensible, and is, at length, marked by effects which it is impossible to mistake.

Wild and independent animals are, of all living beings, man not excepted, the least subject to changes and variations of any kind. Possessed of absolute liberty in the choice of their food and climate, their nature varies less than that of domestic animals, which we enslave, transport, mal-treat, and feed without consulting their taste. Wild animals live uniformly in the same manner; they wander not from climate to climate; their native wood is a country to which they are faithfully attached, and from which they never remove but when they feel they can no longer live in it with security. When they fly it is less to avoid their natural enemies than the presence of man. Nature has supplied them with resources against other animals; with them they are on a level; they know their strength, their cunning, their designs, their haunts, and if they cannot avoid, they oppose them with force to force. But how can they guard against beings who can seize without seeing, and can destroy without approaching them? It is man, therefore, who disturbs, and who disperses these wild animals, and renders them a thousand times more savage than they would otherwise be, for the greater part require nothing but tranquillity, nothing but a moderate and innocent use of the air and earth.

By Nature they are prompted to reside together, to unite in families, and to form a kind of social intercourse. Of this intercourse we still find vestiges in countries not totally engrossed by man; we there find works achieved in common, designs which, without being founded on reason, seem, nevertheless to be projected for rational convenience, and the execution of which supposes at least an union and concurrence of individuals occupied in it. Nor is it by physical force or necessity, like the ants, the bees, &c. that the beavers labour and build; unconstrained either by space, time, or number, they assemble from choice. Those that agree dwell together; and those that disagree live apart; and some, from being perpetually repulsed by the body, are obliged to lead a solitary life. It is only in remote and desert countries, where there is little dread of the approach of man, that they endeavour to establish themselves, and render their habitations more fixed and commodious, by constructing dwellings, or, as it were, small hamlets, which not unaptly represent the first efforts and feeble labours of an infant commonwealth. In countries, on the contrary, over which man is diffused, terror seems to dwell, all society is lost among animals, all industry ceases, and every art is suppressed; they relinquish the occupation of building, and neglect every accommodation; always pressed by fear and necessity, their only study is to live, and their only employment flight and concealment; and if, as may reasonably be supposed, the whole surface of the earth should, in process of time, be equally inhabited by the human species, in a few centuries the history of a beaver would be considered as a fable. The faculties and talents of animals, therefore, instead of increasing are constantly diminishing, for time may be said to oppose them. The more the human species are multiplied and improved the more they become subjected to the dominion of an absolute tyrant, who will hardly permit their individual existence, deprives them of liberty, of every avenue to society, and destroys the very root of their intelligence. What they are become, or what they may become, is an inadequate indication of what they have been or might be. Who can say, if the human species were annihilated, to which of the animals would the sceptre of the earth belong?

THE STAG, OR RED DEER.[C]

[C] The stag in Greek [Greek: elaphos]; in Latin _cervus_, in Italian _cervo_; in Spanish _ciervo_; in Portuguese _veado_; in German _hirsch_; in Danish _hiort_; in Swedish _kronhjort_; in Dutch _hert_; in Polish _jelenie_.

The Stag is one of those mild, peaceable, and innocent animals, which seem created to adorn and animate the solitudes of the forest, and to occupy, remote from man, the peaceful retreats of Nature. His light and elegant form, his flexible yet nervous limbs, his grandeur, strength, and swiftness, his head, rather adorned than armed with living branches, which, like the leaves of a tree, are every year renewed, sufficiently distinguish him from the other inhabitants of the forest. As he is the noblest among these, he has been made subservient to the pleasures, and employed the leisure of the greatest heroes. The exercise of the chace may well succeed, or should rather precede the fatigues of war. To be acquainted with the management of horses and arms are talents equally common to the warrior and the hunter. A familiarity with address, bodily exercise and fatigue, so necessary to support courage, are found in the chace, and carried into the field of battle. Hunting is an agreeable school of a necessary art; the only amusement which entirely detaches diversion from business; the only recreation that is totally unaccompanied with effeminacy, and always produces a lively pleasure, that never satiates or cloys. In what manner can those men be better employed who, from their situations, are constantly fatigued with company, than in hunting? Continually, as it were, beset with a multitude, exposed to the importunity of their demands, forced to attend to the affairs of others, to embark in matters of the greatest concern, and, in effect, to be the more constrained in proportion to the elevation of their stations; great men would only feel the irksome weight of grandeur, and exist only for others, if they did not occasionally abstract themselves from a crowd of attendant flatterers. To enjoy themselves in real social affections, to preserve private friendships, to nourish sentiments a thousand times more precious than all the ideas of grandeur, they have need of retirement from the bustle of business, and what retirement can afford greater variety, or be accompanied with more animation than the chace? what exercise can be more beneficial to the body? what relaxation more agreeable to the mind?

To be always acting, or holding intercourse with man, would be as fatiguing as perpetual thinking. Man is not intended by Nature for the contemplation of abstract matters; to occupy himself in different pursuits, to lead a sedentary life, and to make his study his centre of existence, is, by no means, a natural situation, any more than it is to be perpetually agitated by the caprices of other men, and to be continually constrained to keep a guard over his looks, words, and actions. Whatever ideas we may entertain of ourselves, it is evident that to personate is not to be, and that we are less calculated to think than to act, to reason that to enjoy. True pleasure consists in the unrestrained use of ourselves. Our best possessions are those we have from Nature. It is the air and the earth, the plains and the forests, that yield us full enjoyments, full of utility, and never to be exhausted. A taste for the chace, fishing, gardening, and agriculture, is therefore natural to all men; and in societies more simple than ours there subsists but two orders both relative to this mode of life; the nobles, whose employment is war and hunting, and the lower people whose sole office is the cultivation of the earth.

In polished societies, where every thing is refined and brought to perfection, to render the pleasures of the chace more lively and delightful, and to ennoble an exercise which is in itself noble and beneficial, it has been formed into an art. The chace of the stag requires a species of knowledge which can only be acquired by experience; it supposes a royal assemblage of men, horses, and hounds, all so practised, trained and disciplined, as by their mutual intelligence to contribute to one end. The huntsman ought to be able to judge of the age and sex of the animal. He should be able to distinguish exactly whether the stag which his hound has _harboured_, be a _brock_, or a staggard; whether it be a young stag, not passed his seventh year, or an old one: the principal data to obtain this knowledge from, are the print of his foot, or his excrement. The foot of the stag is better formed than that of the hind; her _leg_[D] is larger and nearer to the heel. His steps leave rounder impressions, and are further asunder; he walks more regularly, and brings the hind foot exactly into the impression made by the fore foot; whereas the paces of the hind are not only shorter, but her hind foot does not so regularly fall into the track of her fore foot. A stag of the fourth head, that is, has acquired his fourth horns are easily distinguished; but it requires much experience to know the foot of a young stag from that of a hind. A stag of six or seven years is still more easily distinguished, for his fore feet are much larger than his hind ones, and the older he grows the thicker, or more worn, are the sides of his feet; the distance of his steps are also more regular, his hind foot resting always with tolerable exactness upon the track of his fore foot, unless when they shed their horns, when the old stag is as liable to mistake as the young ones, though in a different manner, and with a regularity unknown to the young stag or the hind, for they rest the hind foot always at the side of the fore one, and never either beyond or within that reach.

[D] By the _leg_ is understood the two bones at the lower extremity behind the foot, which leave an impression upon the ground as well as the foot.

In the dry season, when the huntsman cannot judge by the footstep, he is obliged to return upon the track of the animal, and endeavour to find his dung. To be able to determine by which requires perhaps more experience than a knowledge of the footsteps, yet without it the huntsman could not make a just report to the sportsmen assembled. When, in consequence of this report, the dogs are led to the shelter of the stag, the huntsman should know how to animate his hound, and make him rest upon the track of the stag until he be dislodged. Instantly the horn is sounded to uncouple the dogs, which the huntsman should encourage both by the horn and his voice; he should also carefully mark the footsteps of his stag, that he may discover if he should start another, and substitute him in his place; it will, in that case, sometimes happen that the dogs will divide and form a double chace; when so, the huntsmen should divide also and recall those dogs which have thus gone astray. The huntsman should always accompany his dogs, and continue to animate without pressing them too hard; he should also assist them in order to prevent their being deceived by the stag, who will try a number of artifices to elude them; he will frequently trace and retrace his own steps, mix with others, and endeavour to draw a young one to accompany him, and so put a change upon the dogs; he will then redouble his speed, dart off one side, or lie down upon his belly to conceal himself. In this case, when the dogs have lost his foot, the huntsman and the hounds labour in conjunction to recover it; but if unable to hit upon his track, they conclude he is resting within the circuit they have made; if their endeavours continue unsuccessful, they have no other way left them than to take a view of the country, which may give them an idea of the place of his refuge. When discovered, and the dogs are again put upon his track, they pursue with more advantage, as they perceive that the stag is fatigued; their ardor augments in proportion as his strength diminishes; and their perception is more lively, as the animal becomes heated; they then redouble their cries and their efforts, and though he is now more full of stratagems than ever, yet as his swiftness diminishes, his doublings and artifices become less effectual, and he has no other resource but to abandon the earth which has betrayed him, and get into the water to make the dogs lose their scent. The huntsmen traverse these waters, and again put the dogs upon the track of his foot; after which he is incapable of running far, and reduced to the last extremity, stands at bay.

He still endeavours to defend his life, and often wounds dogs, horses, and even huntsmen with his horns, until one of them ham-string him that he may fall, and then put him to death by a stroke of his hanger. They then celebrate the death of the stag with a flourish of horns, and the dogs partake of the victory by their perquisite of his flesh.

All seasons are not alike proper for hunting the stag. In spring, when the forests begin to be cloathed with leaves, and the earth to be covered with verdure and flowers, their odour diminishes the scent of the hounds, and as the stag is then in his full strength it is difficult for them to overtake him. The huntsman also agree that the season when the hinds are about to bring forth is that in which the chace is attended with the most difficulty; and that, at that time the dogs will quit a fatigued stag, to follow any hind that gambols before them: and in like manner, at the beginning of autumn, which is the stag's rutting season, the blood-hounds lose all their ardour in hunting; the strong scent of the rut probably renders the track less distinguishable, and very possibly the scent of all stags is at this season nearly the same. In winter, when the snow lies on the ground, it is also improper to hunt the stag, as the hounds have no scent, and appear to follow the track rather by the sight than the smell. At this season, as the stags find not sufficient food in the forests, they issue forth into the open country, and go even into inclosures and cultivated lands. They unite in herds in the month of December, and when the frosts are severe, they endeavour to find shelter by the side of a hill or in a thicket, where they lie close, and keep themselves warm by means of their breath. At the end of winter they frequent the borders of the forests, and frequently destroy the rising corn. In spring they shed their horns, which fall off spontaneously, or by a small effort after entangling them with the branch of some tree. It is seldom that the horns of both sides fall at the same time, there usually being an interval of a day or two between them. The old stags shed their horns first, which happens about the end of February, or beginning of March; those in the seventh year in the middle of March; those in the sixth year, the beginning of April; the young stags, those from three to five years old, the beginning, and the prickets not till the middle, or latter end of May. But in all this there is much variety, for old stags sometimes shed their horns later than those which are young; besides they are more forward in casting their horns when the winter has been mild, than when severe and of a long continuance.