NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 147 



To these instances of tender attachment, many more of 

 which might be daily discovered by those that are studious of 

 nature, may be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous 

 perversion of the a-ropy^, which induces some females of the 

 brute creation to devour their young because their owners 

 have handled them too freely, or removed them from place to 

 place ! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs 

 and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. 

 When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that 

 destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed ; since 

 reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable 

 of any enormity ; but why the parental feelings of brutes, 

 that usually flow in one most uniform tenor, should some- 

 times be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler 

 philosophers than myself to determine. 



LETTER XV. 



SELBORNE, July 8th, 1773. 



SOME young men went down lately to a pond on the verge 

 of Wolmer Forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, 

 many of which they caught, and, among the rest, some very 

 minute yet well-fledged wild-fowls alive, which upon examina- 

 tion I found to be teals. I did not know till then that 

 teals ever bred in the south of England, and was much 

 pleased with the discovery : this I look upon as a great 

 stroke in natural history. 



We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white 

 owls that constantly breed under the eaves of this church. 

 As I have paid good attention to the manner of life of these 



