152 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
an hotbed, in order to add some fresh dung. From out of the 
side of this bed leaped an animal with great agility that made a 
most grotesque figure; nor was it without great difficulty that it 
could be taken ; when it proved to be a large white-bellied field- 
mouse with three or four young clinging to her teats by their 
mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desultory and rapid 
motions of this dam should not oblige her litter to quit their hold, 
especially when it appeared that they were so young as to be both 
naked and blind! 
To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which 
might be daily discovered by those that are studious of nature, may 
be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of 
the oropyn, which induces some females of the brute creation to 
devour their young because their owners have handled them too 
freely, or removed them from place to place! Swine, and some- 
times the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this 
horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of 
an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so 
much amazed; since reason perverted, and the bad passions let 
loose, are capable of any enormity ; but why the parental feelings 
of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor, should 
sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philoso- 
phers than myself to determine. 
I am, -&c. 
