12 NATURAL HISTORY 



the master was sitting in his garden in the 

 dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, 

 with tail erect trotting towards him, and 

 calling with little short inward notes of 

 complacency, such as they use towards their 

 kittens, and something gambolling after, 

 which proved to be the leveret that the 

 cat had supported with her milk, and con- 

 tinued to support with great affection. 



Thus was a graminivorous animal nur- 

 tured by a carnivorous and predaceous 

 one! 



Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as 

 a cat, of the ferocious genus pf Feles, the 

 murium leo, as LinncBus 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 oc- 

 casioned 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 procuring her teats to 

 be drawn, which were too much distended 



