244 NATURAL HISTORY 



their mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desul- 

 tory and rapid motions of this dam should not oblige 

 her litter to quit their hold, especially when it appeared 

 that they were so young as to be both naked and 

 blind ! 



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 affec- 

 tion, that monstrous perversion of the oropyvf, 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 1 . 

 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, ,\ < . 



LETTER XV. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, July 8, 1773. 



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 



1 Professor Coleman's opinion that want of milk causes mothers to 

 destroy their offspring, is not sufficient to account for the female killing 

 and eating those young which have been handled or moved, and which 

 she had previously suckled. W. Y. 



