152 NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 



an hotbed, in order to add some fresh dung. From out of the 

 side of this bed leaped an animal with great agility that made a 

 most grotesque figure ; nor was it without great difficulty that it 

 could be taken ; when it proved to be a large white-bellied field- 

 mouse with three or four young clinging to her teats by their 

 mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desultory 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 affection, that monstrous perversion of 

 the trropyr), 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 some- 

 times the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this 

 horrid and preposterous murder. 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 philoso- 

 phers than myself to determine. 



I am, &c. 



