LETTER XXXIV 



TO THE SAME 



SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. 



DEAR SIR, 



" . . . adm6runt ubera tigres." 



We have remarked in a former letter 1 how much in- 

 congruous 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 fortnight, 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 inward notes of complacency, such as they 

 use towards their kittens, and something gamboling 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 carni- 

 vorous and predaceous one ! 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the 

 ferocious genus of Feles, the murium leo, as Linnczus calls it, 

 should be affected with any tenderness towards an animal 

 whiclj is it's natural prey, is not so easy to determine. 



1 Letter XXIV. 



112 



