NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 205 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the 

 ferocious genus of Fells, the murium leo, as Linnaeus calls 

 it, should be affected with any tenderness towards an 

 animal which is its natural prey, is not so easy to 

 determine. 



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 pro- 

 curing 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. 



"... viridi fcetarn Mavortis in antro 

 Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circurn 

 Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem 

 Impavidos ; illain tereti eervice reflexam 

 Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua"."* 



The cave of Mars was dressed with mossy greens : 

 There by the wolf were laid the martial twins, 

 Intrepid on her swelling dugs they hung ; 

 The foster dam loll'd out her fawning tongue: 

 They su'ck'd secure, while bending back her head, 

 She lick'd their tender limbs ; and formed them as they fed." 

 DRYD. VIBG. Mn. viii line 840. 



