FOSTER PARENTAGE. 487 



But there are other and more legitimate or commendable 

 forms of boarding out the young by certain animals. Thus the 

 effect of the experience of kind treatment of its kittens by a 

 human mistress has led a cat in a subsequent confinement to 

 quarter one kitten after another on this human foster-mother, 

 to leave them as foundlings at her hearth ; a kind of deser- 

 tion of offspring, dictated by no want of natural affection, 

 but apparently by the same kind of policy that leads so many 

 poor human parents to agree to the adoption and up-bring- 

 ing of one or more of their loved young by some wealthy 

 and childless, but kindly, widow or couple. A cat of feeble 

 nursing power carried her kitten to another feline mother, 

 who at once, for friendship's sake, or from a liberal maternal 

 love, accepted the new and additional duties imposed upon 

 her (Wynter). 



One of the most interesting forms of foster-parentage is 

 the tender nursing of human children by the elephant (Wat- 

 son), horse, and dog. Such nursing shows that there is no 

 necessary impossibility or improbability in human children 

 becoming sometimes foster-young to beasts such as wolves 

 in the so-called 'Wolf-children' of India, for instance, 

 being really tended, as story reports, by forest wolves. 



Just as there is so frequently a transfer of maternal love 

 to the young of another individual or species, so there is a 

 much more natural and intelligible, an easy and rapid, trans- 

 fer of filial affection and attachment on the part of foster- 

 young to their foster-mother. There is a very natural and 

 intelligible reciprocity of affection : the young that are so 

 lovingly catered for, fostered and cherished, respond to all 

 this care and attention as they would have done to that of 

 their own mothers, provided these mothers had displayed a 

 natural kind or degree of maternal solicitude. 



But there are other results in the foster-young that are 

 of even greater interest and importance, to wit the acquisi- 

 tion of liabits alien to the species or genus of the habits of the 

 foster-parents an acquisition begotten either by mere imita- 

 tion and association, by special training, or by both. The 

 same thing happens when an animal from birth is brought up 

 exclusively with companions of a different species or genus. 



