NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 209 
This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance 
which grave historians as well as the poets assert, of exposed 
children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that 
probably had lost their young. For it is not one whit more 
marvellous that Romulus and Remus, in their infant state, should 
be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little sucking leveret 
should be fostered and cherished by a bloody grimalkin.* 
we viridi foetam Mavortis in antro 
Procubuisse Jupam: geminos huic ubera circum 
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 
Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam 
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua.” ¢ 
* See “Observations on Various Parts of Nature,’’—Cat suckling young squirrels. 
Similar cases have frequently occurred, and the causes may be partly as stated by Mr. 
White, as mentioned in a note to Constable’s edition of ‘‘ Selborne.’? We once saw a 
litter of pigs suckled by a pointer-bitch. ‘‘On the 27th'of April, 1820,” writes Mr. 
Broderip in ‘* Zoological Journal,’”’ ‘‘ I saw a cat giving suck to five young 7a¢s and a 
kitten. ‘The cat paid the same maternal attention to the young rats in licking them and 
dressing their fur as she did to her kitten, notwithstanding the great disparity in size.’’ 
These occurrences, however, take place naturally, for they cannot be forced, as every 
shepherd well knows while attempting to persuade a ewe that has lost her own lamb to 
become a foster-mother. Instinct by smell at once discovers the proposed change, and 
deception is sometimes successful by employing the skin of the dead-born as a temporary 
covering for the other, until it has been once permitted to suck. 
t ‘* The cave of Mars was dressed with mossy greens: 
There by the wolf were laid the martial twins, 
Intrepid on her swelling dugs they hung; 
‘The foster dam loll’d out her fawning tongue: 
They suck’d secure, while bending back their head, 
She lick’d their tender limbs ; and formed them as they fed.” 
Dryp. Virc. x. viii line 840. 
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