LXXYI.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
209 
habit, she became as much delighted with this fondliDg as if it 
had been her real offspring. 
This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance 
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. For it is not one whit more 
marvellous that Eomulus and Remus, in their infant state, 
should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little suck- 
ing leveret should l)e fostered and cherished hj a bloody 
grimalkin. 
" — — — — viridi foetam Mavortis in antro 
Prociibnisse Inpam : gemiiios hiiic libera circum 
Ludere pendeutes pueros, et lambere matrem 
Impavidos ; illam tereti cervice reflexam 
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." 
(ViRG. JEn. viii. 630-634.) 
Or, as Christopher Pitt renders the Roman poet : — 
" Here in a verdant cave's embowering shade, 
The fostering wolf and martial twins were laid ; 
The indulgent mother, half reclined along, 
Look'd fondly back, and formed them with her tongue." 
[Again a boy has taken three little squirrels in their nest, or 
drey, as it is called in these parts. These small creatures he 
put under the care of a cat who had lately lost her kittens, 
and finds that she nurses and suckles them with the same 
assiduity and affection as if they w^ere her own offspring. 
So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled by a 
cat, that the foster-mother became jealous of her charge, and in 
pain for their safety ; and therefore hid them over tlie ceiling, 
Avhere one died. This circumstance shows her affection for 
these fondlings, and that she supposes the squirrels to be her 
own young. Thus hens, when they have hatched ducklings, 
are equally attached to them as if they were their own chickens.] 
— Observations on ISTature. 
Selborne, May 9, 1776. 
P 
