These animals live eight or nine years; and as they pass the greater part of their lives in burrows, where they remain in repose and tranquillity, they grow much fatter than hares. Their flesh is also very different, both in colour and taste. That of the young rabbit is very delicate, but the flesh of the old ones is always hard and dry. They were originally, as I have already observed, natives of hot climates. They were known to the Greeks; and it appears that the only countries in Europe where they anciently existed were Greece and Spain. From thence they were brought into the more temperate climates of Italy, France, England, and Germany, where now they are naturalized; but in colder climates, as Sweden, and other northern parts, they can scarcely be reared in the house, and perish if they are left in the fields. On the contrary, they thrive in excessive heat, for we meet with them in the southern parts of Asia and Africa, as about the Persian Gulph, the Bay of Saldana, in Lybia, Senegal, and Guinea. We also meet with them in our American Islands, whither they have been transported from Europe, and have thriven extremely well. CHAPTER IV. OF CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS.[L] [L] This division is according to the last Paris edition of Buffon. We apprize the reader of this, because he will find included under the denomination of carnivorous animals, some, which he may probably have been accustomed to refer to a different species. Hitherto we have only treated of useful animals. Those which seem injurious are a far greater number; and though it universally appears that what is hurtful exists in greater plenty than what is serviceable, yet, as in the physical world, evil is subservient to good, for there can in fact, be no evil, since nothing, in effect, injures Nature. If to destroy animated beings is hurtful, is not man who is considered as forming a part of the general system of those beings, the most injurious and pernicious of them? He alone sacrifices and annihilates more living individuals than all the carnivorous tribes. No further, then, are they injurious than because they are the rivals of man, because they have the same appetites, the same fondness for animal food; and because to satisfy a want of the most urgent necessity, they occasionally dispute with him that prey which he had reserved for his own excesses; for we sacrifice more to our intemperance than to our real wants. Born to destroy those beings which are subordinate, we should exhaust Nature if she were not exhaustless, and by a fertility superior to our depredations, renovates the destruction we continually make. But it is so ordained that death should contribute to life, and that reproduction should spring from destruction. However great, therefore, may be the waste made by man and carnivorous animals, the total quantity of living matter is never diminished, and if they hasten deaths they are also the cause of new births being produced.