placed their nest on a naked
bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that
followed. But a hot sunny season coming on before the brood was half
fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must
inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested
an expedient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all
the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for
breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring.

A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow-wren, which
had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and myself had
observed as she sat in her nest; but were particularly careful not to
disturb her, though we saw she eyed us with some degree of jealousy.
Some days after, as we passed that way, we were desirous of remarking how
this brood went on, but no nest could be found, till I happened to take a
large bundle of long green moss, as it were, carelessly thrown over the
nest in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder.

A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and instinct occurred to me
one day as my people were pulling off the lining of a hot-bed, in order
to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of this bed leaped an
animal with great agility, that made a most grotesque figure; nor was it
without great difficulty that it could be taken, when it proved to be a
large white-bellied field-mouse with three or four young clinging to her
teats by their mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desultory and
rapid motions of this dam should not oblige her litter to quit their
hold, especially when it appeared that they were so young as to be both
naked and blind!

To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which might be
daily discovered by those that are studious of nature, may be opposed
that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the [Greek text],
which induces some females of the brute creation to devour their young
because their owners have handled them too freely, or removed them from
place to place! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and
cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now
and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so
much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are
capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that
usual