To a thinking mind, nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct which impresses young animals with the notion of the situation of their natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even before those weapons subsist or are formed. * Thus a young cock will spar at his adversary before his spurs are grown; and a calf or lamb will push with their heads before their horns 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 the point of our scissars. There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in the open air before, and that they were taken in for refuge, at the mouth of the dam, when she perceived that danger was approaching; because then, probably, we should have found them somewhere in the neck, and not in the abdomen. LETTER LXXIV. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. CASTRATION has a strange effect: it emasculates both man, beast, and bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other sex. Thus, eunuchs have smooth unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad hips, and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt stags and bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like cows for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head like pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens. Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows.† * An adder with two distinct heads, which lived three days, taken with five others from the body of an old one, found in a ditch at Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire, is now in the museum of Mr Thomas Grierson, Baitford, near Thornhill. - ED. + After castration animals generally lose their spirit, although, in the instance of horses, this is by no means always the case. The following fact is a strong evidence of this: : - The horse of a nobleman in Ireland ran at a man, seized him with his teeth by the arm, which he broke; he then threw him down, and lay upon him. Every effort to get him of Thus far it is plain, that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr Lisle, in his book on husbandry, carries it much farther; for he says, that the loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself. He had a boar so fierce and venereous that, to prevent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he was passionately attached, and from whom no fences could restrain him. LETTER LXXV. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. THE natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason is plain, because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time; however, my neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage to a nicety, kept a half-bred Bantam sow, who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth year; at which period, she shewed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth, and the decline of her fertility. For about ten years, this prolific mother produced two litters in the year, of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many died. From long experience in the world, this female was grown very sagacious and artful. When she found occasion to converse with a boar, she used to open all the intervening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept, and when her purpose was served, would return by the same means. At the age of about fifteen, her litters began to be reduced to four or five; and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation, she was allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three proved unavailing, and they were forced to shoot nim. The only reason could be assigned for such ferocity was, that he had been castrated by this man some time before, which the animal seems to have remembered -ED. 1 - hundred pigs, a prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a 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 fœtam 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 neighbouring 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 * The earth-worm has been long considered a viviparous animal, but M. Léon Dufour seems to have determined that it is oviparous. 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?"— En. |