A NEW FOSTER-MOTHER FOR KITTENS.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOIL."]
SIR,—The letter signed "F. Simcox Lea," which appeared in the Spectator of May 27th, induces me to give you an account of a similar incident at my residence in Surrey, differing in our case only inasmuch as it has been a recurring one for at least six consecutive years. The birds (which we call "blue- tits ") for the first two years built under an inverted flower- pot on a ground-floor window-sill, but the pot being transferred to another position, they followed it there. We have often looked at them when sitting, and the bird has frequently remained on the nest while the pot was lifted and replaced. Once the greater part of the half-fledged brood fluttered off, and got scattered about, and had to be replaced through the hole in the top, seeming none the worse. Once away, they do not seem to return to the nest, as do the broods of the kind of wren which builds a round ball of a nest in the bushes. I unintentionally put the whole dozen or so of young birds out of one of these nests one Sunday morning, under a fierce fire of scolding from the old bird, found them all there again the following Sunday, and (finally, I imagine) put them all out again on the Sunday after that.
It may interest your readers who care about this sort of subject, to hear of the singular incident at our farm two years ago, of a hen taking charge of three kittens. The mother-cat must have taken them herself an hour or two after their birth and placed them under the hen, which had made a nest for herself two or three yards off under the manger in a cow- shed. I saw the eat and her progeny lying on the straw directly after their birth, and noticed the hen on her nest. Returning an hoar or two later, the cowman showed me the kittens under the hen, wondering how they had got there, as nobody else had been in the shed, and he had not touched them. Till the kittens grew too big, the hen never left them ; the cat used to go away foraging, and come down every xiow and then, throw herself down alongside the hen and nurse her young ones, sometimes lying with her head under, and her paws almost round, the hen's neck. As the kittens got older, it was droll to see their foster. mother following them about and trying to cover them with her wings. For some six weeks it was quite the sight of the neighbourhood. I suppose incidents of the sort are not very unfrequent, though rare to one's own personal knowledge.--I am, Sir, Sco.,
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