Wealthy persons use a wolf-skin for a carriage-rug, and in the rainy season as a mat at the door of a room. "There is nothing good in the wolf," says Buffon, "he has a base low look--a savage aspect, a terrible voice, an insupportable smell, a nature brutal and ferocious, and a body so foul and unclean that no animal or reptile will touch his flesh. It is only a wolf that can eat a wolf." "No animal," writes Cuvier, "so richly merits destruction as the wolf." With these two funeral orations on these incarnate fiends of Natural History, I shall close this chapter, remarking that the anathema bestowed on them by Buffon is not quite correct, for if wolves are dangerous, and enemies to the public weal, and "there is nothing good" in them during their lives, they, at least, become useful after their death. CHAPTER XXI. Fishing in Le Morvan--The naturalists--The _Gour_ of Akin--The English lady--The mountain streams--Château de Chatelux--Sermiselle--New mode of killing pike--Pierre Pertuis--The rocks and whirlpool there--The syrens of the grotto--Château des Panolas--The Cousin--The ponds of Marot and lakes of Lomervo--Mode of taking fish with live trimmers--The Scotch farmer. Having disposed of the quadrupeds of Le Morvan, I must enlarge a little upon the finny tribe of my native province, who would, I feel sure, be not a little annoyed if after having mentioned nearly every other creature capable of affording amusement to the sportsman I were to pass them over in silence. Besides, the shade of Izaak Walton would haunt me, and his disciples no doubt wish me well hooked, if I omitted to give them a chapter on angling,--but it shall be short, and I will avoid all scientific discussion. Theories sufficient have been hazarded, and books written without number from the days of old Aristotle, who arranged them in three great divisions, the Cetaceous, the Cartilaginous, and the Spinous; down to Gmelin, who divided them into six orders, the Apodal, the Jugular, the Thoracic, the Abdominal, the Branchiostagous, and the Chondropterygious. How men, learned and scientific men, can be so barbarous as to invent such grotesque names as these is surprizing, or why Apicius should be remembered for having been the first to teach mankind how to suffocate fish in Carthaginian pickle; or Quin, for having discovered a sauce for John Dories; or Mrs. Glasse, for an eel pie; or M. Soyer, celebrated for depriving barbel of their sight, in order to make them grow fatter, and be more acceptable to the epicure. Into this wilderness of discoveries, I have no intention of introducing you, gentle reader. The wisest plan is to cook and eat your fish in the ordinary mode--fry, broil, bake, boil, or grill; and call a perch, a perch, not a thoracic; a pike, a pike, &c., and pay little attention either to cooks or naturalists.