ATTACHMENT OF ANIMALS. 
195 
LETTER XXXIV. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, May 9, 1776. 
«* — admorunt ubera tigres." 
We have remarked in a former letter how much incongruous 
animals, in a lonely state, may be attached to each other from a 
spirit of sociahly ; in this it may not be amiss to recount a dif- 
ferent motive which has been known to create as strange a 
fondness. 
My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, which 
the servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about the same time 
his cat kittened and the young were dispatched and buried. 
The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone the way of 
most fondlings, to be killed by some dog or cat. However, in 
about a fortnight, as the master was sitting in his garden in the 
dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting 
towards him, and caUing with httle short inward notes of com- 
placency, such as they use towards their kittens, and something 
gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had 
supported with her milk, and continued to support with great 
affection.* 
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous 
and predaceous one ! 
Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious 
genus of FeleSf the murium leOy as Linnaeus 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 occasioned by that desi- 
derium, 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 with milk, till, from 
habit, she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it 
had been her real offspring. 
This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance 
* Endless instances of similar occurrences are upon record, and 1 have myself seen a femak 
cat suckle a puppy. The parental feelings of small birds operate very strongly when in a state of 
confinement ; I have continually witnessed birds in an aviary wishing to feed each other, and 
some of them will readilj^ attend to any nestlings that are entrusted to their charge. Thus a 
tree-pipit in my possession brought up a brood of ten young bottletits. Those species, however, 
which are of a predatory, or at least omnivorous turn, are apt to be much less charitable. The 
tits are of this character, and I have known a coletit {pams ater) very deliberately seize, and begin 
to eat, one of a nest of kinglets which had been confided to its protection^ — Ed. 
