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