4: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 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 pre- 
posterous 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 phil- 
osophers than myself to determine. 
LETTER XV. 
SELBORNE, July 8th, 1773. 
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 
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 inclosures for them, which seem 
