214 NATURAL HISTORY 
was allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred 
pigs : a prodigious inftance of fecundity in fo large a quadruped ! 
She was killed in fpring 1775. 
I am, &c. 
LETTER XXXIV. 
TO THE SAME. 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, May 9, 17760 
« — . — — — — admorunt ubera tigres." 
W E have remarked in a former letter how much incongruous 
animals, in a lonely ftate, may be attached to each other from a 
fpirit of fociality ; in this it may not be amifs to recount a different 
motive which has been known to create as fbrange a fondnefs. 
My friend had a little helplefs leveret brought to him, which the 
fervants fed with milk in a fpoon, and about the fame time his 
cat kittened and the young were difpatched and buried. The 
hare was foon loft, and fuppofed to be gone the way of moft fond- 
lings, to be killed by fome dog or cat. However, in about a 
fortnight, as the mafter was fitting in his garden in the dulk of 
the evening, he obferved his cat, with tail ereft, trotting towards 
him, and calling with little ftiort inward notes of complacency, 
fuch 
