OF SELBORNE. 7,15 
fuch as they ufe towards their kittens, and fomething gamboling 
after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had fupported 
with her milk, and continued to fupport with great afleftion. 
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and 
predaceous one ! 
Why fo cruel and fanguinary a beaft as a cat, of the ferocious 
genus of Felcs, the murium leo, as Linnaus calls it, fliould be 
affeded with any tendernefs towards an animal which is it's natural 
prey, is not fo eafy to determine. 
This ftrange affedtion probably was occafioned by that defi- 
derium, thofe tender maternal feelings, which the lofs of her 
kittens had awakened in her breaft ; and by the complacency and 
eafe (he derived to herfelf from the procuring her teats to be 
drawn, which were too much diftended with milk, till, from habit, 
fhe became as much dehghted with this foundling as if it had been 
her real offspring. 
This incident is no bad folution of that ftrange circumftance 
which grave hiftorians as well as the poets affert, of expofed 
children being fometimes nurtured by female wild beafts that pro- 
bably had loft their young. For it is not one whit more marvellous 
that Romulus and Remus, in their infant ftate, fhould be nurfed by 
a fhe-wolf, than that a poor little fucking leveret fliould be foftered 
and cherifhed by a bloody grimalkin. 
— — _ " viridi foetam Mavortis in antro 
" Procubiiiffe lupam : geminos huic ubcra circum 
" Ludere pendeates pueros, et lambere matrem 
" Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam 
*' Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." 
LETTER 
