172 WHITE 



to her seventeenth year, at which period she showed some 

 tokens of age by the decay of her teeth and the decline of 

 her fertility. 



For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters 

 in the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a 

 litter ; but, as there were 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 f atting-pen. She proved, when 

 fat, good bacon, juicy and tender ; the rind, or sward, was re- 

 markably thin. At a moderate computation she was allowed 

 to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs : a pro- 

 digious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped ! She 

 was killed in spring 1775. 



I am, etc. 



LETTER XXXIV 



SELBORNE, May gth, 1776. 

 . . . "adm6runt ubera tigres." 



DEAR SIR, We have remarked in a former letter 1 how 

 much incongruous animals, in a lonely state, may be attached 

 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 young were despatched and 

 buried. The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone the 

 way of most fondlings, to be killed by some dog or cat. How- 

 ever, in about a fortnight, as the master was sitting in his 

 garden in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, with 

 tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short 



