218 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



" Some years ago the late Hon. Marmaduke Maxwell of 

 Terref^les. took me to his stable to show me a cat which was 

 at the' time bringing up a family of young rats. The cat some 

 weeks previously had had a litter of five kittens ; three were 

 taken away and destroyed shortly after their birth ; next day 

 it was found that the cat had replaced her lost kittens by 

 three young rats, which she nursed with the two remaining 

 kittens. A few days afterwards the two kittens were taken 

 away, and the cat very shortly replaced them by two more 

 young rats, and at the time I saw them the young rats 



which were confined in an empty stall — were running about 



quite briskly, and about one-third grown. The cat happened 

 to be out when we went into the stable, but came in before 

 we left; she immediately jumped over the board into the 

 stall and lay down : her strange foster-family at once ran 

 under her, and commenced sucking. What renders the cir- 

 cumstance more extraordinary is, that the cat was kept in 

 the stable as a particularly good ratter."* 



* Mr. P. Dudgeon, Nature, vol. xx, p. 77. 



