1?6 NATURAL HISTORY 



proved to be a large white-bellied field mouse 1 with three or 

 four young clinging to her teats by their mouths and feet. 

 It was amazing that the desultory and rapid motions of this 

 dam should not oblige her litter to quit their hold, especially 

 when it appeared that they were so young as to be both 

 naked and blind ! 



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 o-ropyn, 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 sometimes be so extravagantly 

 diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself to 

 determine. 



LETTER XV. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, July 8, 1773. 



OME 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 examination I found to be teals. I did not 



The long-tailed field mouse, Mus sylraticus. ED. 



