NA TURAL HIS TOR Y OF SELBORNE. 209 



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 sucking leveret 

 should be fostered and cherished by a bloody grimalkin.* 



" " . . . viridi fcetam Mavortis in an'ro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circum 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 

 Impavidos : illam tereti cervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguaV' t 



* See " Observations on Various Parts of Na'ure," Cat suckling young squirrels. 

 Similar cases have frequently occurred, and the causes may be partly as stated by Mr. 

 White, as mentioned in a note to Constable's edition of " Selborne." We once saw a 

 litter of pigs suckled by a pointer-bitch. " On the 2jth 'of April, 1820," writes Mr. 

 Broderip in "Zoological Journal," " I saw a cat giving suck to five young rats and a 

 kitten. The cat paid the same maternal attend n to the young rats in licking them and 

 dressing their fur as she did to her kitten, notwithstanding the great disparity in size." 

 These occurrences, however, take place naturally, for they cannot be forced, as every 

 shepherd well knows while attempting to persuade a ewe that has lost her own lamb to 

 become a foster-mother. Instinct by smell at once discovers the proposed change, and 

 deception is sometime? successful by employing the skin of the dead -born as a temporary 

 covering for the other, until it has been once permitted to suck. 



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

 There by the wolf were laid the martial twins, 

 Intrepid on her swellings dugs they hung ; 

 The foster dam loll'd out her fawning tongue : 

 They suck'd secure, while bending back their head, 

 She lick'd their tender limbs ; and farmed them as they fed. " 



DRYD. VIRG. JEn. viii lins 840. 



