166 AFFECTIONS OF BIRDS. 



To these instances of tender attachment, many 

 more of which might he daily discovered, hy those 

 that are studious of nature, may be opposed that 

 rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the 

 crop 77), 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 sometimes 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 philosophers than myself to determine. 



LETTER LIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, July 8, 1773. 

 DEAR SIR, 



SOME young men went down lately to a pond 

 on the verge of Wolmer Forest, to hunt flappers, or 



On the night above mentioned, this board was blown down in- 

 wards, and the room immediately filled with bats and swifts. 

 Many of the former had one or two young adhering to their 

 breasts, while flying round the room, and, even when knocked 

 down, were not freed from their burdens. Above sixty were 

 caught in this small space, and kept until morning, and at least 

 as many must have escaped. They appear to be on terms of 

 perfect amity with the swifts. W. J. 



