214 N A T U R A L H I S T O R Y
was allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred
pigs: a prodigious inftance of fecundity in fo large a quadruped !
She was killed in fpring 1775.
I am ,. &c.
L E T T E R XXXIV.
TO TH E S AM E .
D E A R S IR j S e l b o r n e , May 9, 1776',
« __ —. — — . —i- adttior-utit ubera trgres.**'’
W E: have remarked; in a former létter hów much incongruous
animals, in a lonely- ftate, may be attached to each othér from a
fpirit of fociality; in this it may not be amifs to recount a different
motive which; has been known to create as ftrange. a Föndncfs.
My. friend, had: a little helplefc leveret brought to him, which the
fervants fed with milk in a fpoon, and about the fame time his
cat kittened and the. young were difpatehed and buried. The
hare was foon loft, and fuppofed to be. gone thewayof moft fondlings,
to be killed; by fome dog or can However, in about a
fortnight, as the mailer was., fitting in his garden in the'dufk of
the evening; he obferved his cat, with taiitereót, trotting towards
him, and calling with little fhort inward notes of complacency,
fuch
O F S £ L B O R N E. 4 1.5
fuch as they ufe towards their kittens, and fomething gamboling
after, which proved to be tire leveret that the cat had fupported
with her milk, and continued to fupport with great affe&ion.
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and
predaceous one 1
Why fo cruel and languinary a beaft as a cat, of the ferocious
genus of Feks, the murium leo, as Linnaus calls it, fhould be
affe&ed With any tendernefs towards an animal which is It’s natural
prey, is not fo eafy. to determine.
. This ftrange affedtion probably was occafioned by that defi-
derium, -thofe tender maternal ifeeliflgs, which the lofs of her
kittens.had awakened in her breaft; and by the. complacency and
eafe fhe derived to «herfelf ■ from the procuring her teats to be
drawn, which were too much diftended with milk, till, from habit,
fhe became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had been
her .real offspring.
This incident is no bad folution of that .ftrange circumftance
which grave hiftdrians as well as the poets albert, of expofed
children being fometimes nurtured by female wild beads that probably
had loft tbeiryoung. For it is.not one whit mere marvellous
that Romulus and Remus, in their .infant ftate, fhould be nurfril by
a (he-wolf, .than that.a poolilittle fucking leveret fhould be foftered
and cherifhed by a bloody grimalkin.
— viridi foetam Mavortis in antro
“ Procubuifle lupam: geminos htiic ubera cifcufa
'* Ludere pendentes pueros, et lamfeere matfem
t( Impavidos : illam tereti cervice .reflexam
“ Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua J*