176 
NATURAL HISTORY 
proved to be a large wliite-bellied field mouse ^ with three or 
four young clinging to her teats by their mouths and feet. 
It was amazing that the desultory and rapid motions of this 
dam should not oblige her litfcer to quit their 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 o-Topyri, which induces some 
females of the brute creation 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 offspring, I am not 
so much amazed ; since reason perverted, 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. 
LETTER XY. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selborne, July 8, 1773. 
OME 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, among the rest, some very 
minute yet well fledged wild-fowls alive, 
which upon examination I found to be teals. I did not 
The long-tailed field mouse, Mus sylvaticus. — Ed. 
