LOVE OF OFFSPRING. 227 



In hunting the next season at Hothfield, a fox was 

 killed at that place, which proved to be the one in 

 question, and which had thus twice found his way 

 from Westmoreland into Kent. By what instinct 

 or exertions of its faculties the animal was enabled 

 to do this, the distance from one place to the other 

 being about three hundred and twenty miles, it is 

 not easy to form an idea. Its well-known cunning 

 would, one would suppose, be of little avail in 

 such an emergency, except in enabling it to procure 

 food. 



Snakes and some other animals, and even in- 

 sects, will put on a semblance of death, when they 

 find that they have no means left of escaping from 

 their enemies. My Bees have contracted the en- 

 trance to their hives, in order to protect them the 

 more readily from depredation. Birds have art- 

 fully endeavoured to conceal their nests by a dif- 

 ferent covering, when they find that their young 

 have been in danger from the discovery of the 

 nest. Eggs have been forsaken after they have 

 been touched, and the nest, after all the labour 

 and art which have been bestowed upon it, aban- 

 doned ; but however much the young may have 

 been handled, I have never yet known an instance 

 in which fear has overcome affection, and induced 

 the parent birds to abandon their offspring; so 

 powerfully does love pervade the animal creation. 



In order justly to estimate the wise arrange- 



