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