224 WOEMS. 



Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous 

 and predaceous one ! 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a heast as a cat, of the fero- 

 cious genus of felis, the murium leo, "the lion of mice," as 

 Linnaeus caUs 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 com- 

 placency and ease she derived to herself from procuring 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. Eor it is 

 not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and E,emus, 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. 



LETTER LXXYII. 

 TO th!e same. 



Selborne, May 20, 1777. 

 Deae Sir, — Lands that are subject to frequent inundations 

 are always poor ; and, probably, the reason may be, because 

 the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and 

 reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more 

 influence in the economy of If ature, than the incurious are 

 aware of ; and are mighty in their effect, from their minute- 

 ness, which renders them less an object of attention ; and 



milk in jets. I once saw a young panther suckled by a bitch, and last year 

 I had a kitten who was often to be seen sucking a spaniel bitch. Many 

 other instances might be brought forward.— Ed. 



