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£792. sympathy of animals. ~ 63 
America, than the long course of barter ‘by which 
our navigators supposed they might be pafsed from 
tribe to tribe, from Hudson’s bay or the Spanifh 
settlements then known. ARCTICUus. 
Sir, To the Editor of the Bee. 
1y a work which tends, in so ample a manner, to dif. 
fuse useful and entertaining instruction, to inspire 
with a desire to investigate nature; and, under your 
impartial and discriminating management, to pro- 
‘mote the expanse of genius, I beg you would insert, 
for the entertainment of the curious and the specula- 
‘tion of the philosopher, the following singular in- 
‘stance of antinatural affection I may call it, which 
very lately oceurred, and which can be well authen- 
ticated, and oblige, Sir, 
Your humbie servant and reader, 
¢ PaTRIEIWUs. 
_— 
‘A FRIEND of mine who enters into the researches of 
nature with activity, happened very lately to be pay- 
ing a visit to a gentieman of independent fortune and 
respectability in a neighbouring county to Ayr, when, 
among other subjects of a like, nature that were in- 
troduced, several instances of uncommon affection, 
manifested by animals of the brute creation, towards 
others of a different species, were enumerated; and, 
among the rest, the extraordinary instance of a cat 
(which belonged to the gentleman of the house, ) ex- 
‘tending its maternal care to a poor solitary caicken, 
which having, by mistake, been placed along with 
