114 
NATUEAL HISTOHY OP SELBORNE. 
to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of this bed leaped 
an animal with great agility that made a most grotesque i&gure ; nor 
was it without great difficulty that it could be taken ; when it proved 
to be a large white-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 
litter 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 afibction, that monstrous perversion of the crropy}), 
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 
ofi*spring, 1 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 philoso- 
phers than myself to determine. I am^ &c. 
LETTEE XV. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, July Sth, 1773. 
Dear Sir, — 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, among the rest, some very minute yet well- 
fledged wild-fowls alive, which upon examination I found to be teals. I 
did not know till then that teals ever bred in the south of England, 
and was much pleased with the discovery : this I look upon as a great 
stroke in natural history. 
We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white owls that 
constantly breed under the eaves of this church. As I have paid good 
attention to the manner of life of these birds during their season of 
breeding, which lasts the summer through, the following remarks may 
not perhaps be unacceptable : — About an hour before sunset (for then 
the mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all 
round the hedges of meadows and small enclosures for them, which 
seem to be their only food. In this irregular country we can stand 
on an eminence and see them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, 
and often drop down in the grass or corn. I have minuted these 
birds with my watch for an hour together, and have found that they 
return to their nest, the one or the other of them, about once in five 
minutes ; reflecting at the same time on the adroitness that every 
animal is possessed of as far as regards the well-being of itself and 
ofispring. But a piece of address, which they show when they 
