362 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



which he recognises them, nothing, not even the severest 

 pangs of hunger, can induce him to approach them. Le 

 Roi, in his letters upon animals, informs us that he has 

 known a Fox to remain fifteen days in his subterraneous 

 hole, that he might not fall into the snares with which he 

 had been environed. 



This timid prudence, however, completely disappears in 

 the female Fox when she has young ones to nurse and to 

 defend. The maternal instinct which in all species, the 

 human not excepted, is probably the strongest of all feel- 

 ings, effaces in the instance before us the specific character 

 of the animal. There is no sentiment so completely disin- 

 terested as this, none in which the sacrifice of self is so 

 instantaneous and so complete. The mother will not hesi- 

 tate a moment to endure the utmost privation, to brave the 

 most appalling danger, nay, to encounter the certainty of 

 death for the preservation of her infant offspring. She that 

 but a little before was all gentleness, shrinking timidity, 

 and fastidious delicacy, who could not bear " the winds of 

 heaven to visit her face too roughly," becomes on the sud- 

 den bold, fierce, and resolute, unshaken by all that is trying, 

 and unrevolted by all that is disgusting. The female Fox 

 watches incessantly over her young, provides for all their 

 wants with unwearied assiduity, and exhibits an audacity 

 very foreign to her general disposition against their most 

 formidable adversaries. 



If we might presume to conjecture at the proximate 

 cause of this maternal instinct, we should be inclined 

 to trace it, like many other powerful sentiments in ani- 

 mal nature, to some sensation of physical pleasure, by 

 which its exercise is accompanied. Even in man, those 

 feelings which assume, for a time, the completest domination 

 over his constitution, have sensual pleasure as their 

 origin and object, however remote their apparent distance 

 from such a source may be, however they may be glossed 



