Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of Feles, 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 the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as much delighted with this fondling 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 fœtam Mavortis in antro
Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos; illam tereti cervice reflexam
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguâ."

(VIRG. En viii. 630-634.)

Or, as Christopher Pitt renders the Roman poet :

* Many readers will remember the itinerant's truck which perambulated the metropolis some years ago, and perhaps does so still, where the rat, the cat, the hawk, the pigeon, and many other equally strange companions, lived in harmony, the law of kindness serving to set aside what is usually considered the first law of Nature, antagonism.-ED.

"Here in a verdant cave's embowering shade, The fostering wolf and martial twins were laid: The indulgent mother, half reclined along,

Look'd fondly back, and formed them with her tongue." [Again a boy has taken three little squirrels in their nest, or drey as it is called in these parts. These small creatures he put under the care of a cat who had lately lost her kittens, and finds that she nurses and suckles them with the same assiduity and affection, as if they were her own offspring.

So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled by a cat, that the foster mother became jealous of her charge, and in pain for their safety; and therefore hid them over the ceiling, where one died. This circumstance shows her affection for these fondlings, and that she supposes the squirrels to be her own young. Thus hens, when they have hatched ducklings, are equally attached to them as if they were her own chickens.]-OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE.

SELBORNE, May 9, 1776.

304

JANDS 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 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 and twigs into it; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a finc

manure for grain and grass.

Worms probably pro

vide 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 sterile: 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 tipulæ (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 havock in the field and garden.

Farmer Young, of Norton-farm, says that this spring (1777) 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 it sprang. 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; they are out every mild night in the winter, as any person may satisfy himself. They are hermaphrodites, and are, consequently, very prolific.

LETTER LXXVIII.

TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

JOU 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.

This 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 and came forth; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood; the old tortoise, near Lewes in Sussex, 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.