Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/83

Rh animal has so often been described that there is little new to say about it. The mountain men are all agreed upon one thing, namely, that the meat is by no means bad; most of them have tried "wolf-mutton" in hard times, and may expect to do so again. The civilizee shudders at the idea of eating wolf from a food-prejudice, whose consideration forms a curious chapter in human history. It is not very easy, says Dr. Johnson, to fix the principles upon which mankind have agreed to eat some animals and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, so it is not uniform. Originally invented for hygienic purposes, dietetic laws soon became tenets of religion, and passed far beyond their original intention: thus pork, for instance, injurious in Syria, would not be eaten by a Jew in Russia. An extreme arbitrariness marks the modern systems of civilized people: the Englishman, for instance, eats oysters, periwinkles, shrimps, and frogs, while he is nauseated by the snails, robins, and crows which the Frenchman uses; the Italian will devour a hawk, while he considers a rabbit impure, and has refused to touch potatoes even in a famine; and all delight in that foul feeder, the duck, while they reject the meat of the cleanly ass. The Mosaic law seems still to influence the European world, causing men to throw away much valuable provision because unaccustomed to eat it or to hear of its being eaten. The systems of China and Japan are far more sensible for densely populated countries, and the hippophagists have shown, at least, that one animal has been greatly wasted. The terrible famines, followed by the equally fearful pestilences, which have scourged mankind, are mainly owing to the prevalence of these food-prejudices, which, as might be expected, are the most deeply rooted in the poorer classes, who can least afford them.

I saw to-day, for the first time, a prairie-dog village. The little beast, hardly as large as a Guinea-pig, belongs to the family of squirrels and the group of marmots—in point of manner it somewhat resembles the monkey. "Wish-ton-Wish" —an Indian onomatoplasm—was at home, sitting posted like a sentinel upon the roof, and sunning himself in the midday glow. It is not easy to shoot him; he is out of doors all day; but, timid and alert, at the least suspicion of danger he plunges with a jerking of the tail, and a somersault, quicker than a shy young rabbit's, into the nearest hole, peeping from the ground, and keeping up a feeble little cry (wish! ton! wish!), more like the note of a bird than a bark. If not killed outright, he will manage to wriggle into his home. The villages are generally on the brow of a hill, near a creek or pond, thus securing water without danger of drowning. The earth burrowed out while making the habitations is thrown up in heaps, which serve as sitting-places in the wet season, and give