324 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



lust 'no ^ : a ires being nurtured by o.ts. 



den; but after regaling itself, always returned to 

 the house as its proper habitation. Its usual 

 companions were a grey-hound and a spaniel ; 

 both so fond of hare-hunting, that they often, 

 went out together without any person accompa- 

 nying them. With these animals the hare spent 

 its evenings ; sleeping on the same hearth,, and 

 occasionally reposing upon their bodies. 



Of hares being adopted and nurtured by their 

 natural enemy, the cat, instances have been re- 

 corded by the most respectable writers. 



" My friend," says Mr. White, in his Natural 

 History of Selborne, " had a little helpless leveret 

 brought to him, which the servants fed with milk 

 from a spoon : about the same time his cat kit- 

 tened, and the young were dispatched and bu- 

 ried. The hare was soon lost, and was supposed 

 to have been killed. However, in about a fort- 

 night, as the master was sitting in his garden, 

 in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, 

 with tail erect, trotting toward him, and calling 

 with short inward notes of complacency, such as 

 they use to their kittens; and something gambol- 

 ling after her, which proved to be the leveret, 

 that the cat had supported with her milk, and 

 continued to nourish with great affection. 



f( This strange affection," continues our author, 

 " was probably occasioned by those tender ma- 

 ternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had 

 awakened HI her breast, and by the ease she de- 

 rived to herself from procuring her teats to be 

 1 



