are sprouted. In the same manner did these young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were in being. The dam, however, was furnished with very formidable ones, which we lifted up (for they fold down when not used), and cut them off with our scissors. DEAR SIR, LETTER XXX. Selborne, May 9, 1776. "Admorunt ubera tigres." 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 had kittens, which 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 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 gambolling 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! 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, 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 mar, vellous that Romulus and Remus, in their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little suckling leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody grimalkin.* * We have also the following note by Mr White in his Ob "Viridi fœtam Mavortis in antro LETTER XXXI. Selborne, May 20, 1777. The DEAR SIR,-LANDS that are subject to frequent inundations are always poor, and probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned. 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. Earthworms, 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 servations: "A boy has taken three little young_squirrels in their nest, or eyry, as it is called in those 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. This circumstance corroborates my suspicion, that the mention of exposed and deserted children being nurtured by female beasts of prey who had lost their young may not be so improbable an incident as many have supposed, and, therefore, may be a justification of those authors who have gravely mentioned what some have deemed to be a wild and improbable story. 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 foundlings, and that she supposed the squirrels to be her own young." 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 wormcasts, 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 tipula (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 * Farmer Young, of Norton farm, says this spring (1777) about four acres of his wheat in one field were entirely destroyed by slugs, which swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang. 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 grassplats with a candle. LETTER XXXII. Selborne, Nov. 22, 1777. DEAR SIR,-You cannot but remember that the 26th and 27th of last March were very hot days, so sultry that everybody 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 66° 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 10th of April, when, the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail. |