306 NATURAL HISTORY 



At a moderate computation she was allowed to have 

 been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a prodi- 

 gious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! 

 She was killed in spring, 1775. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXXIV. 



TO THE SAME. 



DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, May 9, 1770. 



" admdrunt ubera tigres." 



WE have remarked in a former letter how much incon- 

 gruous 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 

 dispatched 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. However, in about a fort- 

 night, 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 in- 

 ward 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 continued to support with great 

 affection. 



Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a car- 

 nivorous and predaceous one 1 ! 



1 An additional instance, which fell under the author's notice, is given 

 in the Observations on various Parts of Nature, printed in a subsequent 

 part of this volume : it is there headed Cat and Squirrels. E. T. B. 



