NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 47 



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 o-Topyrj, 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 per- 

 verted, 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, with the greatest esteem 

 Your most obedient Servant, 

 Gil : White. 





