A Lamb with two Mothers. 225 



too, as on each occasion she made violent struggles to 

 escape. 



Three days were passed in this forcing process, when, 

 by chance, another yeaning ewe of the same flock 

 and breed, bat a white one, dropped a dead lamb, 

 the lamb being also white. So, partly to prevent the 

 swelling of her udder, as partly for experiment's sake, I 

 had this white mother also brought upon the lawn, and 

 tethered just outside the rope radius of the black one. 

 Then the lamb was put to her, and although so different 

 in colour from her own dead one, which had been with 

 her some time, she not only suckled the blackamoor 

 willingly, but appeared greatly pleased with it. 



For several weeks the two ewes were thus kept picketted 

 on the lawn at a little distance apart, the lamb running 

 loose between them. And during all this time its black 

 and real mother would not let it have a drop of her 

 milk without being held, instead always " bunted " it off 

 angrily; while the white foster-mother fondled and freely 

 gave it all she had. Still the filial instinct remained true 

 to nature, though the maternal one was false ; and the 

 little creature, despite all repulses, kept closer to, and 

 seemed fonder of, its own unkind mother than the one 

 that had so kindly adopted it. 



Concurrent with this call on its divided affections, there 

 were other claimants to a share in them. Being a 

 beautiful creature, it was often taken up in the arms 

 of a fair lady, and brought inside the house, where it 

 made the acquaintance of a white bull-terrier, and a 

 Persian cat of the same colour. In common with these 

 it was allowed the run of both dining and drawing-room ; 

 and scores of times have I seen the three quadrupeds, 

 types of an internecine hostility tiger, wolf, and sheep 



Q 



