AFFECTION IN A CAT. 239 



near double the number of pigs to that of teats, 

 many died. From long experience in the world, 

 this female was grown very sagacious and artful. 

 When she found occasion to converse with a boar, 

 she used to open all the intervening gates, and 

 march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one 

 was kept, and when her purpose was served, would 

 return by the same means. At the age of about 

 fifteen, her litters began to be reduced to four or five ; 

 and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting - 

 pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy and 

 tender; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. 

 At a moderate computation, she was allowed to have 

 been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs ; a 

 prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quad- 

 ruped ! She was killed in spring, 1775. 



LETTER LXXVI. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. 

 " Admorunt ubera tigres." 



DEAR SIR, 



WE have remarked in a former letter how much 

 incongruous animals, in a lonely state, may be at- 

 tached to each other from a spirit of sociality ; in 

 this, it may not be amiss to recount a different 

 motive, which has been known to create as strange 

 a fondness. 



My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to 

 him, which the servants fed with milk in a spoon, 

 and about the same time, his cat kittened, and the 



