OF SELBORNE. 147 



To these instances of tender attachment, many more of 

 which might be daily discovered by those that are studious of 

 nature, may be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous 

 perversion of the crropyrj, 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. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XV. 



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 young wild-ducks, many of 

 which they caught, and, among the rest, some very minute yet 

 well-fledged wild-fowls alive, which upon examination, I found 

 to be teals. I did not know till then that teals ever bred in the 

 south of England, and was much pleased with the discovery : 

 this I look upon as a great stroke in natural history. 



We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white 

 owls that constantly breed under the eaves of this church. As 

 I have paid good attention to the manner of life of these birds 

 during their season of breeding, which lasts the summer 

 through, the following remarks may not perhaps be unaccept- 

 able * : About an hour before sunset (for then the mice begin 



* [It is well known in Selborne that owls often have three broods of 

 two each in the course of the summer ; and in my notes of the year 1853, 



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