NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 215 



affected with any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural 

 prey, is not so easy to determine. 



This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desi- 

 derium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her 

 kittens had awakened in her breast ; and by the complacency and 

 ease she derived to herself from the procuring her teats to be 

 drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, 

 she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had 

 been her real offspring. 



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. 



" . . . viridi foetam Mavortis in antro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circum 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 

 Impavidos : illam tereti cervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." * 



NOTE TO LETTER XXXIV. 



1 An incident told me by Mr. Harrett, of Kirkwhelpington, may well be 

 told here. He has a fine colley bitch which had young ones. She was annoyed 

 by a cat prowling about them, and killed it. This cat had one small kitten, 

 which the maids tried to rear by hand in the kitchen. The bitch hearing its 

 cries fetched it away and laid it among her own pups, suckling it until they 

 were all weaned together, thus atoning as far as she could for the murder of 

 its mother. 



; The cave of Mars was dressed with mossy greens : 

 There by the wolf were laid the martial twins, 

 Intrepid on her swellings dugs they hung ; 

 The foster dam loll'd out her fawning tongue : 

 They suck'd secure, while bending back her head, 

 She lick'd their tender limbs ; and formed them as they fed." 



DRYD. VIRG. <Ln. viii. line 840. 



