ANIMALS. 28? 



The choice of situation in bringing forth is also very remarkable. 

 In most of the rapacious kinds, the female takes the utmost precautions 

 to hide the place of her retreat from the male, who otherwise, when 

 pressed by hunger, would be apt to devour her cubs. She seldom, 

 therefore, strays far from the den, and never approaches it while he 

 is in view, nor visits him again till her young are capable of providing 

 for themselves. Such animals as are of tender constitutions, take the 

 utmost care to provide a place of warmth, as well as safety, for their 

 young ; the rapacious kinds bring forth in the thickest woods ; those 

 that chew the cud, with the various tribes of the vermin kind, choose 

 some hiding-place in the neighbourhood of man. Some dig holes in the 

 ground ; some choose the hollow of a tree ; and all the amphibious 

 kinds bring up their young near the water, and accustom them betimes 

 to their proper element. 



Thus nature seems kindly careful for the protection of the meanest 

 of her creatures : but there is one class of quadrupeds that seems en- 

 tirely left to chance, that no parent stands forth to protect, nor no in- 

 structor leads, to teach the arts of subsistence. These are the quad- 

 rupeds that are brought forth from the egg, such as the lizard, the tor- 

 toise, and the crocodile. The fecundity of all other animals, compared 

 with these, is sterility itself. These bring forth above two hundred at 

 a time ; but, as the offspring is mors numerous, the parental care is 

 less exerted. Thus the numerous brood of eggs are, without farther 

 solicitude, buried in the warm sands of the shore, and the heat of the 

 sun alone is left to bring them to perfection. To this perfection they 

 arrive almost as soon as disengaged from the shell. Most of them, 

 without any other guide than instinct, immediately make to the water. 

 In their passage thither, they have numberless enemies to fear. The 

 birds of prey that haunt the shore, the beasts that accidentally come 

 there, and even the animals that give them birth, are known, with a 

 strange rapacity, to thin their numbers as well as the rest. 



But it is kindly ordered by Providence, that these animals, which 

 are mostly noxious, should thus have many destroyers ; were it not 

 for this, by their extreme fecundity, they would soon overrun the earth 

 und cumber all our plains with deformity. 



END OF THE FIRST VOLUMB. 



