NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 173 



inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their 

 kittens, and something gambolling after, which proved to be the 

 leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and con- 

 tinued to support with great affection. 2 



Thus was the graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivo- 

 rous and predaceous one ! 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the fero- 

 cious genus of Felis, the murium leo, as Linnaeus calls it, 

 should be affected with any tenderness towards an animal 

 which is its natural prey, is not so easy to determine. 



This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desi- 

 derium, those tender, maternal feelings, which the loss of her 

 kittens had awakened in her breast ; and by the complacency 

 and ease she derived to herself from the procuring her teats 

 to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, 

 from habit, she became as much delighted with this foundling 

 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 foetam Mavortis in antro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circum 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 

 Impavidos : illam tereti cervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." 8 



NOTES 



1 Letter XXI V. G. W. 



2 An incident told me by Mr. Harrett, of Kirkwhelpington, may welhoe 

 told here. He has a fine collie bitch which had young ones. She was 

 annoyed by a cat prowling about them, and killed it. This cat had one 

 small kitten, which the maids tried to rear by hand in the kitchen. The 

 bitch hearing its cries fetched it away and laid it among her own pups, suck- 

 ling it until they were all weaned together, thus atoning as far as she could 

 for the murder of its mother. 



8 " The cave of Mars was dressed with mossy greens : 

 There by the wolf were laid the martial twins, 



