[Footnote 008: "Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.

For a while his body lay unburied, the prey of beast and bird, and when it was interred in the Slesvig cathedral there was no rest for it.

But, remember, thou wilt soon be called upon to justify what thou hast said, and I trust to see thy name rank high amongst those by whom the prey shall be rent from the mighty.

During the last month of his stay in Paris, when he was weary of everything, afflicted with hypochondria, the prey of melancholia, when his nerves had become so sensitive that the sight of an unpleasant object or person impressed itself deeply on his brainso deeply that several days were required before the impression could be effacedthe touch of a human body brushing against him in the street had been an excruciating agony.

Little difference made it to the mink whether his prey were bird or woodmouse.

Its principal prey is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions: but at times the loup-cervier will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to let them stray alone into the brushwood.

They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad, soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the "droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs, sleeping birds and human blood.

The favorite prey of the mussurama is the most common and therefore the most dangerous poisonous snake of Brazil, the jararaca, which is known in Martinique as the fer-de-lance.