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 

 arop^r), which induces some females of the brute cre- 

 ation 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 off- 

 spring, I am not so much amazed ; since reason per- 

 verted, 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. 



Selborne, March 26, 1773. 



LETTER LIII. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



Some 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, 



184 



