hat feeds it, and is touched with the
feelings of gratitude!

I am, etc., etc.

P.S.--In about three days after I left Sussex, the tortoise retired into
the ground under the hepatica.

LETTER XIV.

SELBORNE, _March 26th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--The more I reflect on the [Greek text] of animals, the more I
am astonished at its effects. Nor is the violence of this affection more
wonderful than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen is in her
turn the virago of the yard, in proportion to the helplessness of her
brood, and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those
chickens, which in a few weeks she will drive before her with relentless
cruelty.

This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, and
sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus a hen, just become a
mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers
standing on end, wings hovering, and clocking note, she runs about like
one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the way of the greatest
danger in order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will
tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her
helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble birds will
assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in
arms at the sight of a hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that
district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens
nesting in the rock of Gibraltar, would suffer no vulture or eagle to
rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill with an
amazing fury; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart
out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the
sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young, she
will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will
wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an hour together.

Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some anecdotes
which I probably may have mentioned before in conversation, yet you will,
I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake of the illustration.

The fly-catcher of the "Zoology" (the _Stoparola_ of Ray), builds every
year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of these
little birds had one year inadvertently