LETTER LXXIV, TO THE SAME. 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. 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 further; 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.† * This is not the case if the spermatic cord has been separated. It equally emasculates the animal, but the horns remain as before the operation.-ED. I apprehend this remark to be erroneous, as I have known the tusks of many dangerous boars sawn off, for safety, without any such consequerce following. I have seen them, however, no longer able to command the monopoly of the sows, as the young boars were no longer afraid of them. -MR. SELLS. LETTER LXXV. TO THE SAME. THE natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason is pla n-because it is neither profitable nor corvenient 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-bed 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 showed 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 hundred pigs-a prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She was killed in spring, 1775. LETTER LXXVI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. 66 Admôrunt 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 dispatched 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.* * About two years since, at a cottar's house in Annandale, Dumfries-shire, a litter of pigs by some accident lost their mother; at the same time a pointer bitch happened to pup, and the puppies suffering the lot common to most such, their place was supplied by the pigs, which were well and affectionately nursed by their foster-parent.-W. J., 1829. It has been most beautifully and providentially ordered that the process of suckling their young is as pleasurable to the parent animal, as it is essential to the support of the infant progeny. The mammæ of animals become painful when over distended with milk. Drawing off that fluid removes positive uneasiness, and affords positive pleasure. The nipple, previously soft and flaccid, becomes, on the young beginning to suck, enlarged, firm, and erect, and the flowing of the milk is accompanied by an. . exquisitely pleasing sensation. The nipple is highly organised, and becomes enlarged on application of slight friction, and by a kind of spasmodic action will sometimes throw out the |