LXXVL] 



OF SELBORNE. 



209 



habit, she became as much delighted with this fondling 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 suck- 

 ing leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody 

 grimalkin. 



viridi fcetatn Mavortis in antro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circuin 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et himbere inatrem 

 Impavid6s ; illam tereti cervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." 



(ViRG. ;n. viii. 630-634.) 



Or, as Christopher Pitt renders the Eoman poet : 



" Here in a verdant cave's embowering shade, 

 The fostering wolf and martial twins were laid ; 

 The indulgent mother, half reclined along, 

 Look'd fondly back, and formed them with her tongue." 



[Again a boy has taken three little squirrels in their nest, or 

 drey, as it is called in these parts. These small creatures he 

 put under the care of a cat who had lately lost her kittens, 

 and finds that she nurses and stickles them with the same 

 assiduity and affection as if they were her own offspring. 



So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled by a 

 cat, that the foster-mother became jealous of her charge, and in 

 pain for their safety ; and therefore hid them over the ceiling, 

 where one died. This circumstance shows her affection for 

 these fondlings, and that she supposes the squirrels to be her 

 own young. Thus hens, when they have hatched ducklings, 

 are equally attached to them as if they were their own chickens-.] 

 OBSERVATIONS ox NATURE. 



SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. 

 VOL. I. 



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