hundred pigs, ‚—a prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She was killed in spring, 1775.* LETTER LXXVI. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. Admorunt ubera tigres. DEAR SIR,- 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 sociality; in this, it may not be amiss to recount a different 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 despatched and buried. The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone the way of most foundlings, 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 calling with little short inward notes of complacency, 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!† £10 10 0 The hog is a very prolific animal, and where persons have the proper means of feeding, it turns out very profitable. The following is the produce of a sow fed near Drogheda, for the short space of nine months: July, 1813. A litter of eleven, seven sold at 30s. July, 1814. A litter of eleven, nine sold at 40s. March, Three of first litter, sold in market at April, Sow sold fat, 18 0 0 31 0 0 20 5 5 £79 15 5 And a breeding sow was kept, valued at £20. A sow, belonging to Mr Thomas Richdale, Leicestershire, had produced, in the year 1797, three hundred and fifty pigs in twenty litters; four years before, it brought two hundred and five in twelve litters. A sow, the property of George Baillie, butcher, in Hospital Street, Perth, on the 22d of August, 1829, littered the amazing number of twenty-nine pigs. Suaban is of opinion, that in twelve generations, a single pair would produce as many as Europe could support.. ED. + Of incongruous attachments formed by animals, there is perhaps none more remarkable than the following, which proves that even the strongest of nature's laws may be altered by circumstances: Mr Cross, 204 CHILDREN SUCKLED BY WILD BEASTS. Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of felis, the murium leo, as Linnæus 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 desiderium, 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 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 which grave historians, as well as the poets, assert, of exposed children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their young. For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus, in their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little sucking leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody grimalkin : Viridi foetam Mavortis in antro Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguâ. in Exeter Change, had, for some years, within one cage, the snake called the hooded snake, cobra di capello, and a canary bird; they appeared most affectionately attached to each other. ED. *A cat, belonging to a person in Taunton, in May, 1822, having lost her kittens, transferred her affection to two ducklings, which were kept in the yard adjoining. She led them out every day to feed; seemed quite pleased to see them eat; returned with them to their usual nest, and evinced for them as much attachment as she could have shewn to her lost young ones. The following is a still more extraordinary proof of the kindly feelings of the cat: A short time ago, a young girl, daughter of Mr John Anderson, farmer at Collin, on the road to Annan, brought home early one morning two fine larks, which she had taken from the nest in a neigh bouring field. Soon afterwards, the girl discovered that one of the larks had been taken out of the cage, and, on searching for it, found that the cat, whose only kitten died a day or two before, had carried the bird to the place where she usually nurtured her offspring, and was trying every method to make it suckle her; and when the lark attempted to get away, she still detained it, evincing the utmost anxiety for its safety. The girl, however, caught the bird, and placed it in the cage, which she hung in a situation beyond the reach of the cat. A few days after, several more birds were brought to the house, one of which the persevering cat also stole, and again tried, by all the endearing acts in her power, to make this likewise accept of her nourishment. Neither of the birds suffered the least injury from the animal. — ED. LETTER LXXVII. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. SELBORNE, May 20, 1777. DEAR SIR,- Lands that are subject to frequent inundations, are always poor; and, probably, the reason may be, because the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the economy of Nature, than the incurious are aware of; and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and fecundity.* Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves into it; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth, called worm-casts, *The earth-worm has been long considered a viviparous animal, but M. Léon Dufour seems to have determined that it is oviparous. The eggs are of a very peculiar structure, being long, tapering, and terminated at each end by a pencil of fringed membranaceous substance. They have more the appearance, indeed, of a chrysalis or cocoon than of an egg; but their pulp, &c. prove them to be true eggs. The worms, when hatched, are very agile, and, when disturbed, will sometimes retreat for safety within the shell, which they have just quitted, or instinctively dig into the clay. Reaumur computes, though from what data it is difficult to conjecture, that the number of worms lodged in the bosom of the earth exceeds that of the grains of all kinds of corn collected by man. A narrative in the Times newspaper of the disinterment of the body of the patriot Hampden, in Hampden Church, in July, 1828, contains some curious facts respecting the worm of corruption. Hampden was interred in June, 1643. It is stated in the Times, that "the skull was in some places perfectly bare, whilst in others the skin remained nearly entire, upon which we discovered a number of maggots, and small red worms, feeding with great activity. This was the only spot where any symptoms of life were apparent, as if the brain contained a vital principle within it which engendered its own destruction; otherwise, how can we account, after a lapse of nearly two centuries, for finding living creatures preying upon the seat of intellect, when they were nowhere else to be found. in no other part of the body?"-ED. - which, being their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass. Worms probably provide new soil for hills and slopes where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably, to avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their detestation of worms; the former, because they render their walks unsightly, and make them much work : and the latter, because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But these men would find, that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and consequently steril: and, besides, in favour of worms it should be hinted, that green corn, plants, and flowers are not so much injured by them as by many species of coleoptera (scarabs) and tipule (long-legs,) in their larva or grub state; and by unnoticed myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently and imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field and garden.* These hints we think proper to throw out, in order to set the inquisitive and discerning to work. ; A good monography of worms would afford much entertainment, and information at the same time; and would open a large and new field in natural history. Worms work most in the spring, but by no means lie torpid in the dead months are out every mild night in the winter, as any person may be convinced that will take the pains to examine his grass plots with a candle; are hermaphrodites, and much addicted to venery, and consequently very prolific. LETTER LXXVIII. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. SELBORNE, November 22, 1777. DEAR SIR, You cannot but remember, that the twentysixth and twenty-seventh of last March were very hot days; so sultry, that every body complained, and were restless under those sensations to which they had not been reconciled by gradual approaches. The sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer coincidences; for, on those two days, the thermometer rose to sixty-six in the shade; many species of insects revived *Farmer Young, of Norton-farm, says, that this spring, about four acres of his wheat, in one field, was entirely destroyed by slugs, which swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang. and came forth; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood ; the old tortoise, near Lewes, awakened, and came forth out of its dormitory; and, what is most to my present purpose, many house-swallows appeared, and were very alert in many places, and particularly at Cobham, in Surrey.* But as that short warm period was succeeded as well as preceded by harsh, severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds, the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the ground, and the swallows were seen no more until the tenth of April, when, the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail. Again, it appears by my journals for many years past, that house-martens retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October; so that a person not very observant of such matters would conclude that they had taken their last farewell; but then it may be seen in my diaries, also, that considerable flocks have discovered themselves again in the first week of November, and often on the fourth day of that month, only for one day; and that not as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at their leisure, and feeding calmly, as if no enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. And this was the case in the beginning of this very month; for, on the fourth of November, more than twenty house-martens, which, in appearance, * We are still unable to account for the reappearance of swallows after they seem to have taken their departure; but, at the same time, we are not inclined to believe in their general torpidity during the winter. We must have proof on this subject. A curious fact respecting the swallow was mentioned by our late worthy friend and intelligent naturalist, Captain Dougal Carmichael. It appears that swallows are birds of passage at the southern extremity of Africa, as well as in other parts of the world. They return to the Cape of Good Hope in September, and quit it again in March and April. A pair of these birds (hirundo capensis) fixed their flask-shaped nest against the angle formed by the wall with the board which supported the eaves. This nest had a single aperture, by which the birds went in and out. It fell down after the young quitted it. On the February following, these birds built in the same place; but on this occasion Captain Carmichael remarked, in the construction of the nest, an improvement which can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. It was formed with an opening at both sides, and the swallows invariably entered at the one, and came out at the other. One advantage obtained by this arrangement was, that its occupants were saved the trouble of turning round in the nest, and thus avoided the risk of any derangement in its internal economy. But the chief object appeared to be, to facilitate their escape from the attacks of serpents, which harbour in the roofs of thatched houses, or crawl up along the wall, and not unfrequently devour both the mother and her young.-ED. |