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Three Against
the
Third Republic
Three Against the Third Republic
Three Against the Third Republic

Sorel Barrès & Maurras

Michael Curtis
With a new introduction by the author
Originally published in 1959 by Princeton University Press.

Published 2010 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

New material this edition copyright © 2010 by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2010005574

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Curtis, Michael, 1923-

Three against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barrès, and Maurras / Mi-
chael Curtis.
p. cm.
Originally published: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-1430-0 (alk. paper)
1. France--History--Third Republic, 1870-1940. 2. France--Politics
and government--1870-1940. 3. Sorel, Georges, 1847-1922. 4. Barrès,
 Maurice, 1862-1923. 5. Maurras, Charles, 1868-1952. 6. Intellectuals
-France--Biography. 7. Democracy--France--History. I. Title.

DC340.C8 2010
944.081--dc22

2010005574

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-1430-0 (pbk)

To six engaging lovers of life

Beth and Victor

Lucianna and Johnny
Mary and Irving
 Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
I. INTRODUCTION
II. TWO CRISES: BOULANGER AND DREYFUS
III. THE MEN: SOREL, BARRÈS, MAURRAS
IV. ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY
V. ATTACK ON THE REVOLUTION
VI. ATTACK ON DECADENCE
VII. INTELLECTUALS AND THE NEED FOR ACTION
VIII. THE DIVIDED REPUBLIC
IX. ATTACK ON THE POLITICS OF THE REPUBLIC
X. THE WEAKNESS OF THE REPUBLIC
XI. TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND A POLITICAL SCIENCE
XII. THE PROPOSED SOLUTIONS
XIII. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
 Introduction to the Transaction Edition
The great French historian Jules Michelet once wrote that history becomes
useless unless one imbues it with the sorrows of the present. With this advice it is
salutary to review the place of the three central figure studied in this book,
Charles Maurras, Maurice Barrès, and Georges Sorel, in the extraordinary
diversity of French political thought and political history in the twentieth
century, and more especially to evaluate their intellectual heritage and the extent
to which they can be held responsible for contributing to past and present
sorrows. This introduction therefore concentrates on those persons and groups
who have been influenced by the three writers rather than attempting to provide
a comprehensive analysis of French thought.
France is not the only country in which intellectuals have sought to participate
in or attempted to influence political action. Nor is it unique in some of its
intellectuals playing a questionable role in writing enthusiastically about or
becoming complicit with anti-democratic, authoritarian, and anti-Semitic
regimes, ideologies or movements. Yet French writers, including those admired
and honored for their literary skill, have been conspicuous in playing this role.
Moreover they have often done so without heed or concern for the consequences
of their activity. The political prejudices of some French intellectuals, some of
them fascinated by fascism, all too often prevailed over moral principle in their
declamations against their own times and society. The fabric of the vision of
those twentieth-century writers was at times more the outcome of phrases and
abstractions than of limpid common sense and reality.1
The reissue of this book provides a welcome opportunity to consider the
impact of the incessant attacks on liberal democracy and on what they
considered the state of French civilization and culture by Maurras, Barrès, and
Sorel. On this issue and on many others the three writers influenced nationalist,
Catholic, and extreme right-wing thought and the action of groups and
individuals in France, and to some extent abroad, for most of the twentieth
century and even into the twenty-first. The three writers had only a negative
impact on French left-wing writers and groups and thus they are not central to
this particular study. However, in light of the intense twentieth-century conflicts
within French society and among its political ideologies, parties, and
organizations a review of the writings of our three political thinkers can help
understand more fully the controversial and diverse positions of later French
political theorists. The book examined their writings up to 1914. A brief summary
of their writings including those after 1914 can set the stage for the evaluation of
those positions.
Charles Maurras (1863-1952) continued throughout his life his self-declared
mission to defend French civilization by his relentless attack on the Third
Republic and its politicians, by his invective against the parliamentary and
democratic system, his diatribes against political opponents, and his vilification
of Jews. He persevered, in countless articles in his journal, L’Action française, and
his many books, in advocating his counter-revolutionary themes for restoration
of monarchy in France, political Catholicism, “integral nationalism,” organic
unity, hierarchical social order, and condemnation of Jews. Maurras was obsessed
from his early years with combating Romanticism, the French Revolution,
individualism, and Jews. His anti-individualism and his anti-revolutionary
ideology were linked with his anti-Semitism. As early as 1895 he wrote that all
individualist theory was of Jewish making. Moreover, he argued that in the
Jewish law and prophets were to be found the first expressions in antiquity of the
individualism, egalitarianism, humanitarianism, and social and political idealism
that were to mark 1789 (the French Revolution).
Maurras remained an intransigent doctrinaire, convinced of his perfect wisdom
and perfect virtue while assuming an attitude of haughty superiority. For
Maurras who early had lost his hearing intellectual discussion was truly a
dialogue of the deaf. His doctrinaire nationalism was founded on the classical
values he admired, the values of authority and hierarchy he perceived in ancient
Greece of the Hellenic period and to a lesser extent in Rome. Unrelentingly
opposed to Romanticism, he defined intelligence as a way to choose, to organize
into a hierarchy and put in order values, as well as to re-establish the proper
order of things in the same way nature had intended it from eternity.
Raymond Aron remarked that Maurras who “certainly held an important place
in the intellectual history of France in the first half of the twentieth century,”
continued to give his morning lessons and political directives to his disciples.2
These lessons included physical as well as polemical incitements against political
opponents. In 1925 Maurras’s journal issued death threats against Abraham
Schrameck, who had been a prefect and was currently minister of the interior
responsible for maintaining order and had sought to control violence by the
Action Française, arguing that he was member of the “degenerate Jewish race.”
One favorite target was Léon Blum, the Jewish leader of the Socialist Party and
prime minister in 1936, who was depicted by Maurras as “détritus humain,” “le
circoncis du Narbonnais” (Blum’s electoral district), “le belliqueux Hébreu,” and
even as a man to be shot, though in the back. Blum was indeed physically
attacked and severely beaten on February 13, 1936, in Paris, by the Camelots du
Roi, the militant force and connoisseurs of street-fighting, attached to Maurras’
Action Française. Even more seriously, Roger Salengro, Blum’s minister of the
interior, committed suicide in November 1936 as a result of the false, libelous, and
unrelentingly fierce charges by the Action Française that he had not been a
prisoner of war but had deserted to the Germans in World War 1. Maurras’
animus against Jews lasted all his life, and was to be a major part of the
antisemitic current in French political thought, right, left, and Catholic.3 His
antisemitic invective influenced many of the later writers mentioned in this
introduction, such as Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Robert
Brasillach, and Lucien Rebatet, all men of intemperate minds and strong passions.
Maurras’s first main target had been Alfred Dreyfus. Believing that France was
under threat from foreigners, especially Jews, Maurras approved of the
condemnation of Dreyfus in 1894 and regarded Colonel Henry who had forged
evidence as a true patriot. His declared position was one of raison d’état; he
argued any review of the Dreyfus case would be detrimental to the interests of
France. National interest was more important than justice. Maurras’s journal,
L’Action française, which in the 1930s had a circulation of over 30,000, continued
to attack Dreyfus even after the latter’s death on July 14, 1935. The Dreyfus
Affair, Maurras argued, had led to anti-patriotic, anti-militarist, anti-Catholic,
and anti-national manifestations. He noted the coincidence that Dreyfus had died
on the 146th anniversary of the taking of the Bastille in 1789. On Maurras’s own
conviction for complicity and intelligence with the enemy in January 1945, he
uttered the famous words, “It is the revenge of Dreyfus.” Ironically, Dreyfus had
been charged with the same offense fifty years earlier. If Maurras did not accept
Nazi ideology or engage on behalf of a Nazi crusade he was as relentless in his
attacks on Jews as were the Nazis. The apparent difference is that his anti-
Semitism was expressed more in cultural or rational terms than in biological
racism. Notwithstanding, Maurras was convinced that Jews were conspiratorial
by nature with their “Oriental spirit.” Though he did not propose their
extermination he had no sympathy for the fate of Jews murdered in the
Holocaust.
Maurras, the theorist of ‘integral nationalism” and of monarchy which should
supplant the Third Republic, experienced both praise and condemnation. He was
a supporter of the Church for political reasons, and was admired by Catholic
Assumptionists. But his personal religious skepticism or agnosticism together
with his emphasis on the primacy of politics (politique d’abord) over spiritual
authority troubled the Catholic hierarchy. Consequently his books were put on
the Index of Forbidden Books between 1926-1939 by the Vatican which also
condemned his journal. Pope Pius XI in December 1926 admonished French
Catholics to keep their distance from his journal. Praise came with his election to
the Académie Française in 1938: he was not expelled from it but instead had his
seat declared vacant after his conviction and sentence in January 1945 by the
High Court in Paris to life imprisonment and deprivation of civil liberties
(national degradation). He was released from prison in March 1952 to enter a
hospital and died there a few months later. Though Maurras endorsed the
Munich agreement in 1938 he, a Germanophobe, supported the war against the
Nazis, at least until June 1940. He then lauded the end of the Third Republic and
the creation of the French State, for him “a divine surprise,” with headquarters in
Vichy, and the conferring of “pleins pouvoirs” on Marshal Philippe Pétain.
It is sometimes held that Maurras’s ideas lay at the heart of the policies of the
Vichy regime led by Pétain, but this is only partly true. Maurras was a
reactionary but not a fascist. A few of his ideas were put forward in the first year
of Vichy, the French State. The interesting first statement of official policy by
Pétain, on October 10, 1940, in language resembling that of Maurras, was that the
new Vichy regime would be “a social hierarchy. It would no longer rest on a false
idea of the natural equality of men, but on the necessary idea of equality of
chances given to all French people to prove their aptitude to serve.” Some of
Maurras’ followers were given official positions in the Vichy regime but were not
prominent, except for Raphaël Alibert who, however, was dismissed in January
1941 after a lost struggle against policies of collaboration with Germany and
disagreements with political personalities.4
The policies of Vichy were thus not in the main inspired by Maurras; it appears
he only met Pétain twice. Nor did Maurras approve of the Vichy “National
Revolution,” a term that had been coined in 1924 by Georges Valois, once close to
both Georges Sorel and Maurras. Maurras supported Vichy, but he was not a
collaborator; he remained anti-German and was critical of the French fascists in
Paris who were collaborators, pro-German, and who favored the creation of a
one-party state. He was equally critical of those who had rallied to Charles de
Gaulle in London after the General’s June 18, 1940 speech calling for a Free
France movement. Maurras also sharply attacked the 27 French parliamentarians,
including former prime minister Édouard Daladier, who had embarked on the
ship, the Massilia, to go to North Africa and who wanted to continue the war
against Germany from a base in the French Empire. They were, he argued,
tearing apart the fabric of the nation and were serving causes that had little to do
with the nation.
Maurras exemplified the dictum of Tocqueville that hatred is a compelling
factor in politics. All his life he engaged in unrelenting onslaught on democratic
and parliamentary institutions, and their personnel, and particularly against Jews,
freemasons, and the conspiracies they supposedly were generating. Not
surprisingly among his many followers were a number of extreme individuals
who engaged in violence. Lucien Rebetat and Henry Charbonneau were among
those who joined the notorious Milice, the paramilitary force created in January
1943 by Joseph Darnand to fight the French resistance and to round up Jews for
deportation. Charbonneau, who was related to Darnand, fled to Germany in 1944
and acted as a Nazi propagandist.
In particular two groups, offsprings of Maurras’ organization, were extremely
violent. One was the Camelots du Roi, responsible for the attack on Blum and for
the February 6, 1934 demonstration outside the French Parliament. Only at the
end of his career did it become publicly known that François Mitterand, as a
young law student in Paris, had some connection with the Camelots, and had
taken part on February 1, 1935, in a demonstration against the “envahissement
des métèques” (literally “ invasion of foreigners” but the term was quite
derogatory), in this case foreign medical students.5 The second group was La
Cagoule (discussed later), the fascist inclined individuals who in 1935, were
disappointed by the Action Française’s very lack of action.
After World War II, the memory of Maurras remained. The Action Française,
which had been dissolved in 1936, reappeared in Vichy, dissolved again in 1944,
was re-established in 1947 by Maurice Pujo, a man whose long right wing history
went back to co-founding the Comité d’Action Française in 1898. Unexpectedly, a
group led by Bertrand Renouvin broke away and founded the Nouvelle Action
Royaliste in 1971. Anti-liberal and hostile to the United States, it called for the
restoration of monarchy of an Orléanist kind with some sharing of political
power. Renouvin ran for president of the Republic in 1974, getting 0.14 percent of
the vote. In later elections he supported François Mitterand.
Maurras main influence was on French nationalist, Catholic, and extreme right
wing thought and action of groups and individuals for most of the twentieth
century. Yet he also influenced for a time a variety of other individuals who
cannot be so characterized; the list includes not only Charles de Gaulle and
Philippe Pétain but also Jacques Maritain, Georges Bernanos, Maurice Blanchot,
and surprisingly Philippe Ariès, Georges Dumézil, and Jacques Lacan.6 Despite
the large number of people Maurras influenced, few accepted his counter-
revolutionary and royalist position. One of the few who did was a small group of
neo-royalists led by Pierre Monnier, a cartoonist and publisher friend and
defender of Céline, who though attracted by Maurras differed from him on a
number of issues. Members of this group were more interested than their mentor
in creating a European community, more concerned with social issues and were
more prepared and anxious to engage in action. A larger group in the 1920s was a
Catholic one, centered on the journal La Gazette française; its mission was to
unite nationalism and religion. In this group Jean-Pierre Maxence and Jean de
Fabrèques were prominent, and the neo-Thomist, Jacques Maritain was
associated with it for a short time. Like Maurras, the group was critical of the
democratic system and favored a hierarchical and authoritarian system but
contrary to his position it placed more emphasis on religion than on politics.
Maurras’ influence, however, was not limited to France. It was said to extend
to foreign political leaders in various countries such as King Albert in Belgium,
and José Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, Francisco Franco, and
Antonio Salazar in Spain and Portugal, and Léon Degrelle, leader of the Belgium
fascist party Rex and future fighter with the Nazi Waffen SS in the war. The
Spanish party Accíon Española took its very name from Maurras. His influence
was apparent in a number of the major Latin American countries among writers
and politicians.
Among the many literary figures for whom he was important, can be included
T. S. Eliot, the self-styled classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-
Catholic in religion. Eliot in 1910 had acknowledged the influence of Maurras on
his thought, and later in 1926 saw him as an example of the classical spirit. He
dedicated to Maurras his essay on Dante in 1929, as “a sort of Virgil, who led us
to the gates of the temple.”7
Maurice Barrès, with Maurras one of the great figures of French right-wing
thought, had a more agreeable personal fate than Maurras, being highly regarded
early in his career and ending as an esteemed pillar of the French literary
establishment. Barrès voiced different convictions in both his career and political
writings. His early novels were focused on the “culte du moi,” on the egotistic
need to create oneself, to search for sensations, a concept which meant stressing
anti-intellectualism and consequently the role of instinct. Intelligence, Barrès
suggested at that time, was a little thing on the surface of our beings. Those early
novels dwell on the supposed potency of the non-rational in human affairs.
These novels were soon followed by the trilogy on collective nationalism. They
are not only important in themselves but these political novels also constitute a
major example of the French penchant for interrelating literature and politics.
Here, and in his political writings, Barrès argued strongly that France was a
country rooted in its history, people and religion, all of which were threatened by
internal decadence and by foreigners.8 These themes of decadence and
xenophobia were to become leitmotifs for countless French literary-political
figures. They shared an unwarrantable self-abasement about the supposed
deficiencies of their own society and civilization.
Barrès’ famous phrase was that French national identity was defined by “la
terre et les morts.” For Barrès, the French nation found its origins in the soil,
history, and tradition. Frenchmen were distinct from foreigners.9 In all this he
was influenced by Jules Soury, professor of physiological psychology at the
Collège de France, a racist fundamentalist and bitter anti-Semite, whose lectures
Barrès attended. France, Barrès thought, had been conquered by Jews as French
Gaul had been conquered by Roman barbarians, both the result of French
decadence. Forgetting that Émile Zola had written of France as “the great and
liberal cradle of the rights of man,” Barrès held that he was an automatic
supporter of Dreyfus because his ancestors were Venetians, and he therefore
thought like a rootless Venetian. Jews, of course, were also “rootless.” They also
had an unfortunate impact on French culture; they were a source of perversion.
Barrès was one of the first to couple nationalism with anti-Semitism; in this he
was to influence countless others.
In Barrès nationalistic glorification, Frenchness was not something one joined
but something with which one was absolutely permeated. In an article in Le
Journal, October 30, 1899, he wrote that “so many of the nationalized (in France)
whatever their personal merit and their good intentions do not have our
community of race, blood, and history, do not feel as we do, above all on national
issues.”10 From the start, Jews, a non-rooted people, were excluded from that
national community. They were alien to manual labor; they were merchants or
usurers, not workers, peasants, or honest small business people.11 Barrès
concluded that Dreyfus’ guilt could be deduced from his “race.” Moreover, Jews
or Dreyfusards, believed in universal values rather than in “French truth,” the
most useful to the nation. Barrès attacked the existing university system because
it imposed abstract systems of thought that contradicted national sentiments.
Barrès took a prominent part, personal and literary, in the Dreyfus Affair,
using the recently coined word “intellectual,” in derogatory fashion to indicate
the Dreyfusards whom he opposed.12 In February 1898 he referred to “half-
baked…and so-called intellectuals...poor poisoned souls.” He dedicated his book,
Leurs Figures, to Édouard Drumont, the Catholic Royalist, whose anti-Semitic
book, La France juive, of 1886 was enormously successful. Drumont founded a
paper, La Libre Parole, in 1892, and was elected as an anti-Semitic candidate for
the Chamber of Deputies in 1898.
Barrès was also elected to that parliament in 1898. In his electoral program he
enunciated his two themes united together as “national socialism,” with emphasis
on class conciliation, social justice, reform, and patriotism.13 This concept was
later to become even more familiar in the platforms of the political parties of the
1930s, such as those of the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) founded by Jacques
Doriot in June 1936, and later in 1941, the Rassemblement National Populaire,
founded by Marcel Déat. Both Doriot and Déat had moved across the political
spectrum from far left to far right. They illustrated the affinity between
communism and fascism, which shared common themes of rejection of
democracy and parliamentary institutions, and advocacy of dictatorial rule. They
also showed that extremism can be both radical and reactionary, which in both
cases can espouse exclusion and extermination of individuals and groups.
Barrès had started his political career as a Boulangist, embodied in the
charismatic General Georges Boulanger, popular minister of war, who became a
symbol for revenge against Germany in the 1880s, after the Franco-Prussian War
in which France suffered a humiliating defeat. Boulanger offered himself as the
strong leader for a weak and divided country, one whose authority would come
from the people by a form of direct democracy. He replicated the attempt of Louis
Bonaparte thirty-five years earlier to stage a coup in similar fashion. The
Boulangist-Bonapartist political formula became the prototype for national
populism, a continuing important strand in French thought.
Barrès illustrated this national populism in both his fiction and in political
action. In what is perhaps his best-known novel, Les Déracinés (The Uprooted) of
1897, his young protagonists visit the tomb of Napoleon in the Invalides to
become more conscious of the heroic glory of the French emperor. Nearly fifty
years later, Raymond Aron was still conscious of this issue raised by Barrès.
While in London during World War II and thinking about the political activities
of Charles de Gaulle then and in the future, Aron wrote an essay, L’Ombre des
Bonaparte in 1943.14 Enumerating the elements in the populist appeal—
government by a popular individual (Louis Napoleon while exiled in London and
by curious coincidence living in the same place as did General de Gaulle a
century later said that “the nature of democracy is to be embodied in one man”),
disparagement of Parliament, and patriotism resulting from humiliation of
military defeat—Aron wondered if de Gaulle would be a danger to democracy if
he ever achieved power. Aron’s conclusion was strong: “Bonapartism is thus both
the anticipation and the French version of fascism.” Fortunately for France, de
Gaulle was no fascist even if his supporters revived the Bonapartist-Boulangist
myth to some extent. Neither was Barrès, though he did call for a republic
concerned with the democratic interests of the workers in the place of the
bourgeois oligarchy.
As a public intellectual, Barrès played a prominent role in several right-wing
and nationalist circles, starting with his activity as an anti-Dreyfusard. Among
other involvements, he was for ten years, 1914-1923, president of the Jeunesses
Patriotes, the youth wing of the Ligue des Patriotes, founded by Paul Déroulède,
an organization dedicated to revenge against the Germans and the retaking
Alsace-Lorraine, lost to France in the Franco-Prussian war. His strong nationalist
participation affected later important extreme right-wing literary figures and
political activists—even more extreme than Barrès, in the 1930s such as Robert
Brasillach, who was executed in February 1945 for his complicity with the Nazi
occupation during World War II, and, after World War II, Maurice Bardèche, also
a fascist.15
Barrès became a staunch patriot in World War I, a traditional conservative and
nationalist in his call for a Union Sacrée to defend France against Germany which
he denounced. Besides writing almost daily contributions of a patriotic nature for
the Echo de Paris, which had a circulation of about 100,000, he visited the front
line on a number of occasions, exulted about the French victory on the Marne,
and accompanied the then General Henri Philippe Pétain to liberation ceremonies
in Metz. He proposed in 1920 in parliament an annual national fête to honor Joan
of Arc, regarded as the incarnation of resistance to the foreigner. He praised
sacrifice for the French fatherland, and he attacked the pacifist left. During these
years, he even praised Jews, in spite of his long obsession against them. One
paradox in Barrès story is that he, unlike Maurras, was friendly to individual
Jews such as Léon Blum and the people connected to the Revue blanche before
the Dreyfus Affair (the Revue blanche was an avant garde, liberal journal,
published by intellectuals who were primarily Jewish). But Barrès also realized
the political usefulness of anti-Semitism, as well as arguing that the calls for
internationalism and collectivism emanated from a few messianic Jews.
Unlike the destiny of Maurras, Barrès was given a state funeral in 1923, and is
still commemorated in a square off the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in central
Paris. His legacy lies not only in his books and articles but also in the countless
literary heirs of different political views, including Henry de Montherlant, the
novelist who elevated violence and masculinity and was, with Georges Bernanos,
one of the few French writers who publicly opposed the 1938 Munich agreement,
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, the romantic neo-fascist journalist and Nazi
sympathizer, Thierry Maulnier, essayist, playwright, and journalist on the right,
and Louis Aragon, one of the founders of Surrealism as well as an ardent
communist spokesperson, François Mauriac, the Nobel Prize winning novelist and
the young André Malraux, one of the most influential and mercurial French
cultural figures of the mid-twentieth century, then on the political left. An
interesting aspect of Barrès’ complex nationalist heritage was the career of his
son, Philippe, who exemplified many of his father’s various ideas. Philippe, a
journalist, was associated with the founding in 1925 of the Faisceau, the first
French fascist party. In 1933, he published a book calling on France to do what
Hitler had done, but after the French defeat in 1940, he left the country to
support, mostly in New York, Charles de Gaulle whose biography he wrote the
next year, and with whom he was linked after the war until their differences over
Algeria.
Maurras and Barrès can more reasonably and accurately be located in the
spectrum of French political thought than can Georges Sorel. This book has
indicated the eclectic and astonishingly diverse character of his intellectual
interests and the inconsistencies and changes of emphasis in his prolific output,
books, articles, and letters, from 1889 to his death in 1922. Evaluating the thrust of
that output, whether on the philosophy of science, religion, or ethics, as well as
on political issues, is not easy in view of the sometimes disjointed character of his
style mixed as it was with highly original thoughts and pertinent brilliant
perceptions.16 One is reluctant to accept Sorel’s own explanation, in a letter to
Benedetto Croce in 1907 that the great preoccupation of his life was the historical
genesis of morality. The changing nature of his arguments over the years, as well
as what Sorel himself confessed were the defects of his manner of writing, also
helps explain the diversity of groups and individuals, traditionalists, fascists,
Bolsheviks, and leftists, who claim his intellectual and political inheritance.
Sorel was certainly consistent on a number of issues. His criticism of bourgeois
society, of liberal democracy, of parliamentary politics, and of Jews, for the most
part, was constant and was to influence both the political left and the right. His
emphasis on élan, on creativity, on traditional values of life and work, on the
need for classes to accomplish what he called their heroic mission, on the use of
myth to direct energy, and on the desirability of creative and ethical violence
used without hatred or revenge in contrast to the force used by the state which
was based on cruelty and greed, were all part of the motivation to overcome the
decadence of French society and politics. Violence was inseparable from creation.
Through these means, by heroic acts, intuition, myth, and proletarian violence,
the evils of the democratic system, its demagoguery, favoritism and incorrect
values could be ended, and the regenerative power of action, art, and religion
would defend civilization.
In assessing Sorel’s writings and arguments, two matters immediately arise,
the lack of specific solutions on the issues he raised, and his questionable
judgment. On the first, Sorel never offered any detailed clarification on action to
deal with issues, even about the call for a general strike, the theme for which he is
perhaps most well known. Indeed, he argued that composing a program for the
future was reactionary. The image and myth about a general strike in his writing
appears more important than the reality and details. The future society was left
to imagination. Indeed, Sorel, in the introduction to the Réflexions sur la violence
(Reflections on Violence), with presumably self-analysis, explains that pessimism
of which he approved and considered desirable is a philosophy of conduct rather
than a theory of the world.
On some of the policy issues he discussed, his judgments were unpredictable.
During World War I, Sorel denounced those people, some of whom were former
associates, who agreed with the Union Sacrée which Barrès had promoted, and he
opposed that war which he found barbaric and not “ethical” and which was one
from which munitions manufacturers and politicians would profit. Yet, at one
time he, the believer in heroic acts, thought regeneration would result from war.
He praised Italy’s military campaign in Libya in 1912 and wrote favorably about
patriotism when reviewing the work, Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc,
that Charles Péguy, at that time still a friend, had written in 1910. Not
surprisingly he was disappointed that the revolutionary syndicalist movement, a
movement in which the members of trade unions would come to power in place
of the bourgeoisie, which he had praised so much in his Reflections on Violence,
appeared to him to have compromised with parliamentary socialism. In the
appendix, “In Defense of Lenin,” written in 1919 for the fourth edition of
Reflections, Sorel wrote with sympathetic understanding of the Bolshevik process
of revolutionary repression: after all, he said, Lenin was not a candidate for the
prize of virtue awarded by the French Academy.
Sorel was also unkind towards those who disagreed with him. He was
particularly bitter towards those who had been supporters of Dreyfus and were
not political extremists. Ten years after the Affair he accused Dreyfusards of
having plotted with Germany to discredit the French military; their loyalty was
thus questionable. He deprecated La Revue blanche, the pro-Dreyfus publication
founded by the Natanson brothers, “two Jews form Poland,” as a salon of
cosmopolitan anarchy which was corrupting French literature. Those artists who
were close to the Revue, Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton, were
“semites;” those opposed to it, Paul Sérusier, Paul Ranson, Maurice Denis were
“latins.” Sorel thought highly of Vincent d’Indy’s opera, The Legend of St.
Christopher, with its theme of combat between the saint and the corrupt king of
gold, a Jew.17 By contrast, Sorel was not only critical of the writings of the Jewish
Julien Benda but also campaigned against his being awarded a literary prize for
his novel, L’Ordination. Sorel broke with Charles Péguy with whom he was
friendly until 1912, because he thought the poet was dependent for the success of
his bookshop on a largely Jewish clientele. Péguy, the ardent patriot, was to be
killed in battle on September 5, 1914 a month after the outbreak of World War I.
For four years, Sorel himself had supported the cause of truth and justice for
Dreyfus; he was critical of the neutrality on the issue by orthodox Marxists,
especially Jules Guesde, the prominent socialist who had said that socialists
should not concern themselves with the Dreyfus Affair or participate in what was
a “bourgeois civil war.” After changing his mind around 1902 on the Affair and its
outcome, Sorel held that those who argued for Dreyfus’s innocence were engaged
in “buffoonery,” and that it had brought political opportunists to power. Now he
saw Jean Jaurès, the socialist leader, as a petty bourgeois, opportunistic, and
spineless. Colonel Georges Picquart, the head of the army’s intelligence service
who had expressed the truth that Dreyfus was innocent and suffered in his career
for doing so; Emile Zola, who had courageously written “J’Accuse” on January
13, 1898 which because it led to the “Dreyfusard revolution” is perhaps the single
most influential newspaper article in history; and Alexandre Millerand, socialist
politician who was associated with Georges Clemenceau and who entered the
government as minister of commerce in 1899, were all unworthy. Anatole France,
the distinguished writer, was castigated for frequenting the literary salons of
Other documents randomly have
different content
surprisingly beautiful. In the foreground lay the picturesque village of
Čerewič; then the broad Danube, with its meadow-forests on the
opposite shore; behind these stretched the boundless Hungarian
plain, exhibiting to the spectator its fields and meadows, woods and
marshes, villages and market towns in an unsteady, changeful light,
which gave them a peculiar charm; in the east lay the stronghold of
Peterwardein. Larks rose singing from the fields; the nightingale
poured forth its tuneful lay from the bushes; the cheery song of the
rock-thrush rang down from the vineyards; and two species of
vulture and three kinds of eagle were describing great circles high in
the air.
When we had gone a little farther we lost sight of river, villages, and
fields, and entered one of the secluded forest-valleys. The sides of
the mountain rise precipitously from it, and, like the ridges and
slopes, they are densely wooded, though the trees are not very tall.
Oaks and limes, elms and maples predominate in some places,
copper-beeches and hornbeams in others; thick, low bushes, which
shelter many a pair of nightingales, are scattered about the outskirts
of the forest. No magnificent far-reaching views reward the traveller
who climbs to the highest ridge to see Hungary lying to the north,
and Servia to the south; but the mysterious darkness of the forest
soothes soul and sense. From the main ridge, which is at most 3000
feet in height, many chains branch off on either side almost at right
angles, and have a fine effect from whatever side one looks at them.
Among them are valleys or enclosed basins whose steep walls make
transport of felled wood impossible, and which therefore display all
the natural luxuriance of forest growth. Gigantic beeches, with
straight trunks smooth up to the spreading crown, rise from amid
mouldering leaves in which the huntsman sinks to the knee; gnarled
oaks raise their rugged heads into the air as if to invite the birds of
prey to nest there; dome-like limes form such a close roof of leaves,
that only a much-broken reflection of the sun’s rays trembles on the
ground. In addition to the nightingale, which is everywhere abundant,
the songsters of this forest are the song-thrush and blackbird, golden
oriole and red-breast, chaffinch and wood-wren; the cuckoo calls its
spring greeting from hill to hill; black and green woodpeckers, nut-
hatches and titmice, ring-doves and stock-doves may be heard in all
directions.
We had come here chiefly to hunt the largest European bird of prey,
the black vulture, Fruskagora being apparently the northern
boundary of its breeding region. The other large European vulture
had recently appeared in the district, probably attracted by the
unfortunate victims of the Servian war, and both species brooded
here protected by the lord of the estate, who was an enthusiastic
naturalist. I was already acquainted with both these species of
vulture, for I had seen them on former journeys, but it was a great
pleasure to me to observe them in their brooding-place, and hear the
reports of my fellow-sportsmen and of Count Chotek; for on this
expedition also our main desire was to increase our knowledge of
animal life. Here again we were able to make a long series of
observations, and many aspects of the life of both these giant birds,
which had hitherto been obscure to us all, were cleared up and
explained by our investigations.
The crested black vulture, whose range of distribution is not confined
to the three southern peninsulas of Europe, but extends also through
West and Central Asia, to India and China, is resident in Fruskagora,
but after the brooding season he frequently makes long expeditions,
which bring him regularly to Northern Hungary, and frequently to
Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. His powerful wings enable him to
undertake such expeditions without the slightest difficulty. Unfettered
by eggs or helpless young, he flies early in the morning from the tree
on which he has passed the night, ascends spirally to a height to
which the human eye unaided cannot follow him, then with his
incomparably keen, mobile eye, whose focal distance can be rapidly
altered, he scans the horizon, detects unfailingly even small carrion,
and alights to devour and digest it, or to store it in his crop. After
feeding he returns to his accustomed place, or continues his
pathless journeying. Not only does he carefully scan the land lying
beneath him, perhaps for many square miles, but he keeps watch on
the movements of others of his species, or of any large carrion-
eating birds, that he may profit by their discoveries. Thus only can
we explain the sudden and simultaneous appearance of several, or
even many vultures beside a large carcass, even in a region not
usually inhabited by these birds. They are guided in their search for
prey, not by their sense of smell, which is dull, but by sight. One flies
after another when he sees that he has discovered carrion, and his
swiftness of flight is so great that he can usually be in time to share
the feast, if he sees the finder circling above his booty. Certainly he
must lose no time, for it is not for nothing that he and his kin are
called “geier”; their greed beggars description. Within a few minutes
three or four vultures will stow away the carcass of a sheep or a dog
in their crops, leaving only the most trifling remains; the meal-time
therefore passes with incredible rapidity, and whoever arrives late on
the scene is doomed to disappointment.
The country round Fruskagora yields a good deal more to the
vultures than an occasional feast of carrion, for in the stomachs of
those which we shot and dissected we found remains of souslik and
large lizards, which are scarcely likely to have been found dead, but
were more probably seized and killed.
On account of the northerly situation of Fruskagora, and the well-
ordered state of the surrounding country, which is not very
favourable to vultures, the black vultures were still brooding during
our visit, though others of the same species, whose haunts were
farther south, must undoubtedly have had young birds by that time.
The eyries were placed in the tallest trees, and most of them on the
uppermost third of the mountain side. Many were quite well known to
Count Chotek and his game-keepers, for they had been occupied as
a brooding-place by a pair of vultures, possibly the same pair, for at
least twenty years, and as they had been added to each year they
had assumed very considerable proportions. Others seemed of more
recent origin, but all were apparently the work of the vultures
themselves. In the oldest and largest of them, a full-grown man could
have reclined without his head or feet being seen projecting over the
edge.
Under these eyries we sat watching, listening to the life and bustle of
the woods, and waiting in the hope of getting a shot at the vultures
which our approach had scared away. For four days we went to the
splendid woods every morning, and never did we return to our vessel
empty-handed. No fewer than eight large vultures, several eagles,
and numerous smaller birds fell to our guns, while valuable
observations, which fascinated us all, added zest and interest to our
sport. But when the last rays of the sun had disappeared, the
younger portion of the population assembled about our ship. Violin
and bagpipes joined in a wonderful but simple melody, and youths
and maidens danced the rhythmically undulating national round
dances in honour of their august guest.
After we had hunted successfully on both sides of the Danube, we
took leave, on the fifth day after our arrival in Čerewič, of our most
devoted host, the lord of the estates, and continued our journey
down the river. In three-quarters of an hour we passed Peterwardein,
a small, antiquated, but picturesquely situated stronghold, and an
hour and a half later, we reached Carlowitz, near which we spent the
night. The next morning we reached Kovil, the goal of our journey.
In the neighbourhood of this large village, and girdled by cultivated
fields, there are woods in which the oak predominates, but which
have such a dense undergrowth, that notwithstanding the many
villages about, the wolves and wild-cats lead a threatening but
scarcely threatened existence in them. It is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that birds of prey of all kinds, especially sea-eagles,
imperial eagles, spotted eagles, and booted eagles, “short-toed
eagles”, kites, hawks, horned and other owls should have chosen
them as a nesting-place, and that they should also harbour all kinds
of small birds. Sure of rich booty the Crown Prince and his brother-
in-law directed their steps to these woods, while Eugen von
Homeyer and I tried our luck up-stream beyond the village, in a
marsh which the flood, then at its height, had transformed into a
great lake.
Fig. 82.—Nest of the Penduline Titmouse (Parus pendulinus).
A surprisingly rich and varied life reigned in this marsh, though only a
very small fraction of the feathered population could be seen, and
indeed the tide of migration was still in full flood. Great flocks of black
terns flew in almost unbroken succession up the river, sometimes
assembling in compact swarms, sometimes distributing themselves
over the whole breadth of the flooded Danube; hundreds of glossy or
dark ibises wandered up and down the stream, flying in the usual
wedge-shaped order towards or away from the neighbouring river
Theiss, apparently still in search of suitable nesting-places; purple
herons, common herons, and squacco herons strode about fishing in
all accessible parts of the great expanse of water; marsh-barriers
flew along their accustomed routes carrying long reed-stalks to their
nests; ducks, mating a second time because the flood had robbed
them of their eggs, rose noisily from the water on the approach of
our small flat boat, while grebes and dabchicks dived for safety—in
short, every part of the vast expanse was peopled. A forester well
acquainted with all the paths through the submerged wood, awaited
us in a house which rose above the flood like an island, and acted as
our guide through a forest-wilderness which far surpassed all that we
had hitherto seen, for the water had added new obstacles to those
always present. Brushing past many branches which must usually be
high above the ground, often stooping beneath boughs which
blocked our way, we attempted to find a route between half or wholly
fallen trees, logs, and drift-wood, and to penetrate to the heart of the
forest. Brooding mallards, whose nests in the tops of the willows had
been spared by the flood, did not rise on our approach, even though
we glided by within a yard of them. Eared grebes, which were out on
the open water, when they saw us, swam sideways into the green
thicket of tree-crowns, chiefly willows, which rose just above the
surface; water-wagtails ran from one piece of drift-wood to another;
spotted woodpeckers and nut-hatches clung to the tree-trunks close
to the water, and searched for food as usual. One picture of bird-life
crowded upon another; but all seemed unfamiliar, because altered
by the prevailing conditions. To reach a sea-eagle’s eyrie we were
obliged to wade a long distance; to visit a raven’s nest we had to
make a wide détour. Hunting in the approved fashion was impossible
under such circumstances, but our expedition rewarded us richly. To
me personally it afforded the pleasure of seeing one of the best of
the feathered architects of Europe, the penduline titmouse, at work
on its nest, and of observing for the first time its life and habits.[88]
The following day our whole company assembled in one of the
woods already mentioned. A Hungarian forester had made
preparations for a wolf-drive on a grand scale, but had arranged it so
unskilfully that Friend Isegrim succeeded in slipping away
unperceived. The unpromising chase was therefore soon
abandoned, and the short time which remained to us was devoted to
more profitable observation of the bird-life in the forest.
In the course of the same afternoon we left Kovil, reached
Peterwardein the same evening, steamed past Fruskagora early in
the night, left the vessel once more the following day to hunt in the
marsh of Hullo, saw there the noble heron which we had until then
sought for in vain, but were obliged to hurry onwards so as not to
miss the fast train for Vienna. Gratefully looking back on the days we
had spent, and lamenting the swiftness with which they had sped,
we steamed rapidly past all the river forests, which had afforded us
so much enjoyment, and, with the ardent wish that we might some
day return to spend a longer time in it, we took leave of this rich and
unique country.
 NOTES BY THE EDITOR.

THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND.

For other pictures of Arctic Natural History the reader may profitably
consult the following works:—
Collett, R. Bird Life in Arctic Norway. Trans. by A. H.
Cocks (London, 1894).
Nordenskiöld, A. E. The Voyage of the “Vega” Round Asia
and Europe, with a Historical Review of Previous Journeys
along the North Coast of the Old World (Trans. by A.
Leslie, 2 vols., London, 1881).
Gilder, W. H. Ice-Pack and Tundra, an Account of the
Search for the Jeanette, and a Sledge Journey through
Siberia (8vo, London, 1883. Chiefly personal, not
scientific).
Hovgaard, A. Nordenskiöld’s Voyage Round Asia and
Europe, a Popular Account of the North-east Passage of
the Vega, 1878-80 (Trans. by H. L. Brækstad, 8vo,
London, 1882).
Pennant’s Arctic Zoology (1785).
[Note 1] p. 38.—Dense masses of fish.
I have consulted a Scandinavian pisciculturist, who, while not
corroborating the occurrence of such vast multitudes, admitted the
periodic appearance of dense local swarms, such as are
sometimes seen in the lochs in the west of Scotland.
[Note 2] p. 45.—The female eider-duck plucking the male.
The popular story of the male eider being made to furnish down
for the nest, after the mother-bird’s supply is exhausted, must, we
fear, be regarded as a misstatement. See Newton’s Dictionary of
Birds (London, 1893), and other authoritative works on
ornithology. Perhaps the story has some basis in the fact that for a
 short time after the breeding season the males undergo a change
of plumage, becoming less decorative and more like the females.
[Note 3] p. 48.—Economic value of eider-down.
According to Stejneger, each nest yields about an ounce and a
third. From Greenland and Iceland alone, six thousand pounds, or
the contents of seventy-two thousand nests, are yearly exported.
Nordenskiöld notes that the quantity of eider-down brought from
the polar lands to Tromsöe amounted in 1868 to 540
kilogrammes, in 1869 to 963, in 1870 to 882, in 1871 to 630, in
1872 to 306, and that the total annual yield may be probably
estimated at three times as much.
[Note 4] p. 57.—Auks.
A graphic description of the King-auks (Alle alle), which breed in
Spitzbergen, is given by Nordenskiöld in the work above
mentioned.
The name auk is oftenest applied only to the razor-bills, but is also
used collectively for other members of the family Alcidæ, such as
guillemots and puffins.
[Note 5] p. 59.—Altrices and Præcoces.
Altrices or nidicolæ are those birds which are more or less
helpless when hatched. They are often blind and naked, and
unable to leave the nest. The food-yolk has been mostly or wholly
used up before birth, and the young depend on what their parents
bring them. Examples are doves, hawks, and passerine birds.
Præcoces or nidifugæ are those birds which are more or less able
to run about when hatched. They are born with their eyes open,
with a covering of down, and with much of their yolk still unused.
Examples are running birds, fowl, gulls, and ducks.

THE TUNDRA AND ITS ANIMAL LIFE.

In addition to Nordenskiöld’s voyage, and other works already cited,
the following may be consulted by those who wish to amplify their
picture of the Tundra and its life:—
Seebohm. Siberia in Asia (1882).
Jackson, F. G. The Great Frozen Land (Bolshaia
Zemelskija Tundra). Narrative of a winter journey across
the Tundras and a sojourn among the Samoyedes (ed.
from the author’s journal by A. Montefiore, 8vo, London,
1895).
[Note 6] pp. 63 and 71.—The Tundra.
[Note 7] pp. 63 and 71.—The Tundra.
With Brehm’s picture of the Tundra, it is interesting to compare
that given by Mr. Seebohm in his address to the Geographical
Section of the British Association at Nottingham, 1893. (Scottish
Geogr. Magazine, ix. (1893), pp. 505-23, with map.)
“In exposed situations, especially in the higher latitudes, the
tundra does really merit its American name of Barren Ground,
being little else than gravel beds interspersed with bare patches of
peat or clay, and with scarcely a rush or a sedge to break the
monotony. In Siberia, at least, this is very exceptional. By far the
greater part of the tundra, both east and west of the Ural
Mountains, is a gently undulating plain, full of lakes, rivers,
swamps, and bogs. The lakes are diversified with patches of
green water plants, amongst which ducks and swans float and
dive; the little rivers flow between banks of rush and sedge; the
swamps are masses of tall rushes and sedges of various species,
where phalaropes and ruffs breed, and the bogs are brilliant with
the white fluffy seeds of the cotton-grass. The groundwork of all
this variegated scenery is more beautiful and varied still—lichens
and moss of almost every conceivable colour, from the cream-
coloured reindeer-moss to the scarlet-cupped trumpet-moss,
interspersed with a brilliant alpine flora, gentians, anemones,
saxifrages, and hundreds of plants, each a picture in itself, the tall
aconites, both the blue and yellow species, the beautiful
cloudberry, with its gay white blossom and amber fruit, the flagrant
Ledum palustre and the delicate pink Andromeda polifolia. In the
sheltered valleys and deep water-courses a few stunted birches,
and sometimes large patches of willow scrub, survive the long
severe winter, and serve as cover for willow-grouse or ptarmigan.
The Lapland bunting and red-throated pipit are everywhere to be
seen, and certain favoured places are the breeding grounds of
plovers and sandpipers of many species. So far from meriting the
name of Barren Ground, the tundra is for the most part a veritable
paradise in summer. But it has one almost fatal drawback—it
swarms with millions of mosquitoes.”
[Note 8] p. 72.—The Mammoth.
The Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) was a near relative of the
Indian elephant, if not indeed a variety of the same species. One
of its characteristics was a woolly covering of brownish hair,
rudimentary traces of which have been found in the Indian
species.
It was abundant in Europe before the glacial epoch, and seems to
have been especially common in Siberia. Lydekker’s Royal
Natural History gives a good account of the finding of the
mammoth, and the striking fact is noticed that the imports of fossil
ivory into England prove that, within a period of twenty years, over
20,000 mammoths must have been discovered.
As Brehm describes, the carcasses are found frozen in the soil, to
all appearance just as the animals died, but the explanation of this
is obscure. The particular case to which he alludes was one of the
earliest finds—by Adams in 1806. Before Adams reached the
carcass, which had been known for some years, the dogs of the
yakuts had eaten most of the flesh.
See also Vogt’s Natural History of Mammals.
[Note 9] p. 73.—Colour of the Arctic Fox.
On the interesting question of the winter colour-change, Mr.
Poulton’s Colours of Animals and Mr. Beddard’s Animal Coloration
should be consulted.
[Note 10] p. 75.—Reindeer devouring Lemming.
With reference to Brehm’s statement as to reindeer eating
lemming, I may note a report on creditable authority that in the
hard winter 1894-5 stags in Aberdeenshire were known to have
eaten rabbits.
[Note 11] p. 76.—Migration of the Lemming.
A careful discussion of the strange migratory instinct of the
lemming will be found in the late Mr. Romanes’s Mental Evolution
in Animals.
[Note 12] p. 77.—Food of the Reindeer.
Though the reindeer may eat grasses and aquatic plants, its great
resource is the so-called reindeer-moss, which is really a lichen,
common on the mountain heights of the interior where the herds
pass the winter.
[Note 13] p. 80.—The Phalarope.
 Of the Grey Phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius) and the Red-
necked Phalarope (Phalaropus hyperboreus), both occurring in
Britain, Professor Newton says: “A more entrancing sight to the
ornithologist can hardly be presented than by either of these
species. Their graceful form, their lively coloration, and the
confidence with which both are familiarly displayed in their
breeding-quarters, can hardly be exaggerated, and it is equally a
delightful sight to watch the birds gathering their food in the high—
running surf, or, when that is done, peacefully floating outside the
breakers.” See also Collett’s Bird Life in Arctic Norway.
[Note 14] p. 84.—Sense of smell and touch.
The somewhat mysterious reference which Brehm makes to a
sense between smell and touch is thoroughly justifiable. To the
senses of many of the lower animals—and even of fishes—it is
exceedingly difficult to apply our fairly definite human conceptions
of smell, taste, touch, &c.
[Note 15] p. 85.—Mosquitoes.
This general term covers a large number of species belonging to
the gnat genus (Culex). They are very various in size, and are
widely distributed from the Tropics to the Poles. Their larvæ are
aquatic, and for their abundance the tundra obviously offers every
opportunity.

THE ASIATIC STEPPES AND THEIR FAUNA.

See—
Bovalet, G. Through the Heart of Asia (trans. by C. B.
Pitman, 2 vols, London, 1889).
Jackson, F. G. The Great Frozen Land, cited above.
[Note 16] p. 91.—Flora of the steppe.
According to Seebohm (op. cit.), “The cause of the treeless
condition of the steppes or prairies has given rise to much
controversy. My own experience in Siberia convinced me that the
forests were rocky, and the steppes covered with a deep layer of
loose earth, and I came to the conclusion that on the rocky ground
the roots of the trees were able to establish themselves firmly, so
as to defy the strongest gales, which tore them up when they
were planted in loose soil. Other travellers have formed other
opinions. Some suppose that the prairies were once covered with
trees, which have been gradually destroyed by fires. Others
suggest that the earth on the treeless plains contains too much
salt or too little organic matter to be favourable to the growth of
trees. No one, so far as I know, has suggested a climatic
explanation of the circumstances. Want of drainage may produce
a swamp, and the deficiency of rainfall may cause a desert, both
conditions being fatal to forest growth, but no one can mistake
either of these treeless districts for a steppe or a prairie.” See also
for general description of steppe vegetation Kerner’s Plant Life
and Wiesner’s Biologic der Pflanzen.
[Note 17] p. 97.—The Quagga.
The true quagga (Equus quagga), intermediate between zebras
and asses, is no longer known to exist, though it was described by
Sir Cornwallis Harris in 1839 as occurring in immense herds. The
name quagga is given by the Boers to Burchell’s zebra (Equus
burchelli).
The same sad fact of approaching extermination must be noted in
regard to not a few noble animals, e.g. rhinoceros, hippopotamus,
and giraffe.
Selous writes in 1893: “To the best of my belief, the great white or
square-mouthed rhinoceros (Rhinoceros simus), the largest of
modern terrestrial mammals after the elephant, will, in the course
of the next few years, become absolutely extinct. Yet, twenty
years ago, it was a common animal over an enormous extent of
country in Central South Africa.
“Never again will the traveller be able to stand upon his wagon-
box, and, like Burchell, Andrew Smith, Cornwallis Harris, and
Gordon Cumming, scan plains literally darkened by thousands
upon thousands of wildebeests, quaggas, Burchell’s zebras,
blesboks, hartebeests, and spring-boks.”
[Note 18] p. 97.—The Buffalo.
The American bison or buffalo (Bos americanus) is now practically
exterminated.
Two sentences from An Introduction to the Study of Mammals, by
Sir W. H. Flower and Mr. R. Lydekker (London, 1891), put the
case in a nutshell.
“The multitudes in which the American bison formerly existed are
almost incredible; the prairies being absolutely black with them as
far as the eye could reach, the numbers in the herds being
reckoned by millions.”
With the completion of the Kansas Branch of the Pacific Railway
in 1871, the extraordinarily careless and ruthless slaughter began.
In less than ten years bison-shooting ceased to be profitable.
And now, “A herd of some two hundred wild individuals derived
from the northern herd is preserved in the Yellowstone National
Park; and it is believed that some five hundred of the race, known
as Wood-Bison, exist in British territory; but with these exceptions
this magnificent species is exterminated”.
A vivid account of the buffalo’s habits and of its rapid tragic
extermination will be found in Mr. Grinell’s essay “In Buffalo Days”
in American Big-Game Hunting (Boone and Crockett Club), edited
by Th. Roosevelt and G. B. Grinell, Edinburgh, 1893.
See also Hornaday, The Extirpation of the American Bison, 1889,
and a monograph by J. A. Allen, “The American Bisons, Living
and Extinct”: Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology,
Harvard, vol. iv., 1876.
[Note 19] p. 102.—Fighting-ruffs.
The ruff (Machetes pugnax) is in many ways a most interesting
bird. Thus, there is the rapid change of plumage, as the result of
which the male acquires his characteristic frill or ruff before the
breeding season. The indefatigable pugnacity of the males, the
efficacy of their shield, their assiduous polygamous courtship,
their subsequent carelessness as to the fate of the reeve and her
young, and their extraordinary “polymorphism”, are very
remarkable. While the individual peculiarities of plumage are very
marked, each ruff is true season after season to its own
idiosyncrasy. Visitors to the National Museum of Natural History in
London will remember a beautiful case of ruffs in the Entrance
Hall.
[Note 20] p. 103.—Sky-goat.
Bleating of snipe. There has been much discussion as to the
origin of the peculiar drumming or bleating sound made by the
snipe, to which it owes its Scotch name of “heather-bleater”, but
many at least agree with Brehm.
[Note 21] p. 106.—Sand-grouse.
Sand-grouse (Pterocles and Syrrhaptes), a group of birds quite
distinct from the grouse. One species, Syrrhaptes paradoxus,
“ranging from Northern China across Central Asia to the confines
of Europe”, has shown a tendency to extensive migration, visiting
Britain, for instance, in 1859, 1863, 1872, 1876, and abundantly in
1888. For a concise account of these irregular invasions see
Newton’s Dictionary of Birds.
[Note 22] p. 107.—Yurt.
According to Radloff “jurte” or “yurt” is a general name for a more
or less transportable rough hut made of stakes, felt, bark, and the
like, varying slightly in construction in different districts. The ring to
which Brehm here refers is probably that through which the upper
ends of the converging stakes are thrust.
[Note 23] p. 109.—The Jerboa.
The rodent here referred to is the Kirghiz jerboa (Alactaga
decumana). What Brehm says as to its eating eggs and young
birds is confirmed by others.
[Note 24] p. 115.—The Sand-grouse or Steppe-grouse.
Pallas’s Sand-grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus), see note 21.
[Note 25] p. 115—Ancestry of the horse.
See Sir W. H. Flower’s little book on The Horse (Modern Science
Series). The kulan or kiang is rather a wild ass than a wild horse,
and the balance of evidence in favour of regarding the Tarpan as
in the line of ancestry is greater than Brehm indicates. Flower
suggests that Przewalski’s horse, discovered some years ago in
Central Asia, and looked upon as a distinct species, may be a
hybrid between the kiang and the tarpan.
[Note 26] p. 116.—Ancestors of the cat and the goat.
It is very generally believed that our domestic cat is descended
from the sacred Egyptian or Caffre cat (Felis caffra). See St.
George Mivart’s monograph on the cat. Similarly, the breeds of
domestic goat are often referred to the Pasang or Capra
ægagrus, found in Crete, Asia Minor, Persia, &c. See a vivid
essay by Buxton in his Short Stalks, entitled “The Father of all the
Goats”.
[Note 27] p. 116.—Wild camels.
An interesting note on wild camels in Spain—a strayed herd—is to
be found in Wild Spain by Chapman and Buck. St. George
 Littledale has recently discussed (Proc. Zoological Society, 1894)
the question whether the camels of Lob-nor, on the slope of Altyn
Tag, are remains of a wild stock or strayed. No wild dromedaries
are known, and the same is probably true of camels.

THE FORESTS AND SPORT OF SIBERIA.

See also—
W. Radloff, Aus Sibirien, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1884.
A. Th. von Middendorf, Voyage dans l’extrême Nord et
dams l’est de la Sibérie (St. Petersburg, 1848).
[Note 28] p. 123.—The Life of the Forest.
With Brehm’s description of this minor forest, the reader should
compare that which Stanley gives of “The Great Central African
Forest” (chap. xxiii. of 2nd vol. of In Darkest Africa). He computes
the size of the main mass at 321,057 square miles. A few
sentences from his description may be quoted.
“Imagine the whole of France and the Iberian peninsula closely
packed with trees varying from 20 to 180 feet high, whose crowns
of foliage interlace and prevent any view of sky and sun, and each
tree from a few inches to four feet in diameter. Then from tree to
tree run cables from two inches to fifteen inches in diameter, up
and down in loops and festoons and W’s and badly-formed M’s;
fold them round the trees in great tight coils, until they have run up
the entire height like endless anacondas; let them flower and leaf
luxuriantly, and mix up above with the foliage of the trees to hide
the sun, then from the highest branches let fall the ends of the
cables reaching near to the ground by hundreds with frayed
extremities, for these represent the air roots of the epiphytes; let
slender cords hang down also in tassels with open threadwork at
the ends. Work others through and through as confusedly as
possible, and pendent from branch to branch—with absolute
disregard of material, and at every fork and on every horizontal
branch plant cabbage-like lichens of the largest kind, and broad
spear-leaved plants—these would represent the elephant-eared
plant—and orchids and clusters of vegetable marvels, and a
drapery of delicate ferns which abound. Now cover tree, branch,
twig, and creeper with a thick moss like a green fur.”
He goes on to describe the rush of life to fill up each gap—the
struggle for existence—the crowding, crushing, and strangling—
the death and disease.
“To complete the mental picture of this ruthless forest, the ground
should be strewn thickly with half-formed humus of rotting twigs,
leaves, branches; every few yards there should be a prostrate
giant, a reeking compost of rotten fibres, and departed
generations of insects, and colonies of ants, half veiled with
masses of vines and shrouded by the leafage of a multitude of
baby saplings, lengthy briars and calamus in many fathom
lengths, and every mile or so there should be muddy streams,
stagnant creeks, and shallow pools, green with duckweed, leaves
of lotus and lilies, and a greasy green scum composed of millions
of finite growths.”
[Note 29] p. 126.—Appearance of Decay in the Forests.
A closely similar picture is given by Mr. E. N. Buxton in recounting
a journey in the Rocky Mountains. He says: “This bane of pack-
trains is caused by forest fires, which have burnt out the life of the
trees, leaving only gaunt stems and blackened ground, followed
by tempests which have whirled these tottering giants in heaps to
the ground. In places the stems lie parallel to one another, and
piled to the height of many feet as though they had been laid in
sheaves. Elsewhere, while some have stood the shock and are
still erect, their neighbours lie prone at every conceivable angle to
one another, and their branches pierce the air as weathered
snags. This ghastly waste, whether brought about by natural
causes, or the recklessness of man, will have to be paid for some
day, for are we not within measurable distance of the inevitable
world-wide timber-famine” (E. N. Buxton, Short Stalks, 1893).
See also Rodway’s In the Guiana Forest (London, 1895), and
article “Death in the Forest” (Natural Science, Sept., 1892).
[Note 30] p. 129.—Taiga.
“A strip of Alpine region, 100-150 miles in breadth, consisting of
separate mountain-chains whose peaks rise from 4800-6500 feet
above sea-level, and beyond the limits of forest vegetation.”
According to Radloff, the name taiga is also generally applied by
the Kalmucks to wooded and rocky mountain-land.
[Note 31] p. 135.—Extermination of the Beaver.
 Mr. Martin, in his eulogy of the beaver (Castorologia, 1892),
describes the rapid diminution of numbers in Canada, largely as
the result of careless greed, but also through the spread of
colonisation. He believes that by the end of the century, none will
be found except in museums. Their rarity in Europe is well known.
[Note 32] p. 136.—Export of skins.
Radloff notes, in 1884, that the yearly sale of furs at the Irbitsch
fair amounts to between three and four millions of roubles.
[Note 33] p. 144.—Velvet of antlers.
An account of the various ways in which pounded antlers and the
vascular velvet were once used in medicine will be found in Prof.
W. Marshall’s recent Arzenei-Kästlein, Leipzig, 1894.
[Note 34] p. 147.—The Elk.
The elk (Alces machlis) is the largest of the land animals of
Europe, and is the same as the “moose” of Canada.
[Note 35] p. 150.—Rouble.
This varies from 3s. 8d. to 3s. 10d., but is usually reckoned as 4s.
Of the kopeks, afterwards referred to, a hundred go to the rouble.
[Note 36] p. 161.—Brick Tea.
Broken or powdered tea-leaves mixed with the blood of the sheep
or ox, and formed into cakes. Other fragrant leaves are
sometimes added.
[Note 37] p. 165.—The Bear rearing her cubs.
I have been unable to find any corroboration of this story as to the
she-bear employing her children of a former year as nurses.

THE STEPPES OF INNER AFRICA.

See—
Selous, F. C. Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa
(1893).
Solymos, B. (B. E. Falkenberg). Desert Life: Recollections
of an Expedition in the Soudan. London, 1880.
Foà, E. Mes grandes Chasses dans l’Afrique Centrale.
Paris, 1895.
Lichtenstein, M. H. K. Reise im Südlichen Africa. Berlin,
1812.
G. Schweinfurth. The Heart of Africa.
J. Thomson. Through Masai Land.
Emin Pasha in Central Africa. Edited by Schweinfurth,
Ratzel, Felkin, and Hartlaub. London, 1885.
Also well-known works by Livingstone, Stanley, &c.
[Note 38] p. 170.—Heat in the Desert.
50° Celsius, or Centigrade = 122° Fahrenheit. Temperatures of
121°, 122°, 133° Fahr., and so on, have been repeatedly recorded
in the desert. Solymos, in his Desert Life, notes 115° Fahr. in the
shade as the maximum for his year. He also calls attention to the
frost and ice! “Duveyrier registered frost twenty-six times between
December and March in the plains of the Central Sahara.” His
picture of the desert-well is much less optimistic than Brehm’s.
[Note 39] p. 173.—The Termites.
Termites or “white ants” are very characteristic, wood-eating
insects of tropical Africa and other warm countries. Though not
related to the true ants, they have somewhat similar social
organizations.
The reader will be rewarded who turns to Prof. Henry
Drummond’s Tropical Africa, where there is not only a graphic
description of the ways of the termites, but an interesting theory of
their possible agricultural importance. As they avoid the light, and
travel on the trees only under cover of their tunnels of finely-
comminuted and cemented earth, they must be continually
pulverizing the soil. When rain-storms come this fine dust is
washed from the trees, and some of it may go to swell the
alluvium of distant valleys. Hence the termite may be, like the
earthworm, a soil-maker of considerable importance. Mr. H. A.
Bryden, in his Gun and Camera in Southern Africa (London,
1893), writes as follows of the termites: “Our cases,
portmanteaus, &c., were arranged round, but not touching the
walls. Every article reposed on glass bottles, as the only known
protection against the depredations of white ants.... They will eat
large holes in a thick tweed coat in one night, and anything softer
than metal left to their tender mercies for a night or two is
irretrievably ruined.... If the huts are inspected every few days, the
tunnels of self-made mortar can be swept away, and the
depredator kept at all events to the flooring.... Most housewives
have, at least once a year, to institute a crusade against the
marauders, dig up the flooring, and attempt to find the queen. If
the queen-ant can be successfully located and dug up, the
nuisance is ended; the rest of the ants, bereft of their sovereign,
at once quit the building, and for a season trouble no more.... In
the forests to the north and west the mischief done by these
insects is enormous. The tree is attacked, the tunnels are run up
along the bole, the wood is pierced and riddled, and the work of
destruction is soon completed.”
There is, however, a lack of precise observation as to the extent
to which termites attack trees which are altogether sound and
living. In great measure they merely hasten and complete a
destruction for whose initiation they are not responsible.
[Note 40] p. 173.—Summer Sleep.
Summer-sleep in torrid regions, affecting a few fishes,
amphibians, and reptiles, is a phenomenon analogous to
hibernation elsewhere, but its physiological explanation is even
more obscure.
[Note 41] p. 174.—The Karroo.
Karroo, a general name for the highland steppes of South Africa.
See H. A. Bryden’s Kloof and Karroo (1889).
[Note 42] p. 178.—Cerastes (Vipera hasselquistii).
The horned viper is the most common viper of Northern Africa. It
is extremely poisonous. It is of a brownish-white colour with
darker markings, and has a scaly spine or horn over each eye.
This species is usually supposed to have been Cleopatra’s asp.
[Note 43] p. 182. See Note 39.
[Note 44] p. 183.—The mud-fish.
This remarkable animal (Protopterus) is one of the Double-
breathers or Dipnoi, a member of a small class between Fishes
and Amphibians, represented by three genera—Ceratodus in
Queensland, Lepidosiren in Brazil, and this Protopterus in Africa.
They differ in many ways from other fishes, being physiologically
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