NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 113 



This strange affection probably was occasioned by that 

 desiderium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss 

 of her kittens had awakened in her breast ; and by the 

 complacency and ease she derived to herself from the 

 procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much 

 distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as much 

 delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real 

 offspring. 



This incident is no bad solution of that strange circum- 

 stance 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. 1 



"... viridi fnetam Mavortis in antro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circum 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrcm 

 Impavidos : illam tereti cervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." 



1 See Gilbert White's note on a Cat suckling three young Squirrels (Obs. on 

 Quadrupeds). Sir William Jardine (ed. " Selborne," p. 209) writes : " We once saw 

 a litter of pigs suckled by a pointer-bitch." " On the 27th 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 attention 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 per- 

 suade 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 sometimes 

 successful by employing the skin of the dead-born as a temporary covering for 

 the other, until it has been once permitted to suck. [R. B. S.] 



VOL. II. 



