A LEVERET REARED BY A CAT. 203 



hundred pigs, a prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a 

 quadruped! She was killed in spring, 1775.* 



LETTER LXXVI. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. 

 Admorunt ubeva tigres. 



DEAR SIR, We have remarked in a former letter how 

 much incongruous 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 despatched and 

 buried. The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone 

 the way of most foundlings, 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 carnivorous 

 and predaceous one ! f 



* The hog is a very prolific animal, and where persons have the proper 

 means of feeding, it turns out very profitable. The following is the 

 produce of a sow fed near Drogheda, for the short space of nine months : 

 July, 1813. A litter of eleven, seven sold at 80s. . . 1010 

 July, 1814. A litter of eleven, nine sold at 40s. . . 18 

 March, Three of first litter, sold in market at . 31 



April, Sow sold fat, 20 5 5 



79 15 5 



And a breeding sow was kept, valued at 20. A sow, belonging to Mr 

 Thomas Richdale, Leicestershire, had produced, in the year 1797, three 

 hundred and fifty pigs in twenty litters ; four years before, it brought 

 two hundred and five in twelve litters. A sow, the property of George 

 Baillie, butcher, in Hospital Street, Perth, on the 22d of August, 1829, 

 littered the amazing number of twenty-nine pigs. Suaban is of opinion, 

 that in twelve generations, a single pair would produce as many as Europe 

 could support. ED. 



f Of incongruous attachments formed by animals, there is perhaps 

 none more remarkable than the following, jwhich proves that even the 

 strongest of nature's laws may be altered by circumstances : Mr Cross, 



