relative to the Habits of Animals, 91 



vne third grown. It was diverting to observe the complacency 

 with which the young creatures sucked in the liberal stream which 

 the teats of their foster-mother supplied ; and curious to see the 

 prey cherished by the milk of the destroyer. The cat paid the 

 same maternal attentions to the young rats, in licking them and 

 dressing their fur, as she did to her kitten, notwithstanding the 

 great disparity of size. The man who exhibited this phaenomenon 

 in the Strand, near Essex Street, said, that the cat had kittened 

 thirteen days, and, at that time, had three kittens at her teats, 

 when he found this nest of young rats, which seemed a few days 

 old, and turned them in, at night, to the cat for her prey : in the 

 morning he found the kittens sharing the milk of their mother 

 with the rats. Two of the kittens were afterwards destroyed, for 

 fear of exhausting the cat by so numerous a family. The man 

 said the cat was a good mouser ; but admitted that he had taught 

 her to abstain from white mice, which he had been in the habit 

 of keeping. 



This is a much stronger case than that mentioned by Mr. 

 White ; for, here, the cat had kittens on which to exercise her 

 maternal tenderness, and which must have sucked sufficiently to 

 prevent any thing like bodily inconvenience. It is hard to ac^ 

 count for this perversion of instinct. Is it that, at such times, 

 the all-powerful and uncontroulable sro^yfi is exercised indiscrimi^ 

 nately upon every young living creature which is thrown upon 

 the mercy of the new mother for protection and nourishment, and 

 is capable of enjoying her care? The cases of the Hedge-Spar* 

 row or Wagtail and the young Cuckoo, of young Ducks which 

 are hatched by Hens, and even subsHtuted for their own broods 

 on their loss or failure, — nay, the very assiduity with which a hen 

 will sit upon a ball or two of whitening, — would all seem to point 

 this way ; but I may weary my readers with fruitless conjectures, 

 and cannot conclude better than in the words of Mr. White, who 

 says, at the end of another letter dated March 26, 1773, " Why 

 the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uni* 

 form tenor, should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I 

 leave to abler philosophers than myself to determine." 



