[73] WHITE, in his _Natural History of Selbourne_, philosophising on the fact which had fallen under his own notice of this indiscriminate suckling of the young of one animal by the parent of another, is disposed to ascribe it to a selfish feeling; the pleasure and relief of having its distended teats drawn by this intervention. He notices the circumstance of a leveret having been thus nursed by a cat, whose kittens had been recently drowned; and observes that “this strange affection was probably 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 suckling leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody Grimalkin.” (WHITE’S _Selborne_, lett. xx.) General SLEAMAN in his narrative of a journey through Oude gives some remarkable narratives of children suckled by wolves and found associating with their cubs. [74] The term “rogue” is scarcely sufficiently accounted for by supposing it to be the English equivalent for the Singhalese word _Hora_. In that very curious book, the _Life and Adventures of_ JOHN CHRISTOPHER WOLF, _late principal Secretary at Jaffnapatam in Ceylon_, see _ante_, note, p. 31, the author says, when a male elephant in a quarrel about the females “is beat out of the field and obliged to go without a consort, he becomes furious and mad, killing every living creature, be it man or beast; and in this state is called _ronkedor_, an object of greater terror to a traveller than a hundred wild ones.” (P. 142.) In another passage, p. 164, he is called _runkedor_, and I have seen it spelt elsewhere _ronquedue_. WOLF does not give “_ronkedor_” as a term peculiar to that section of the island; but both there and elsewhere, it is obsolete at the present day, unless it be open to conjecture that the modern term “rogue” is a modification of _ronquedue_. [75] BUCHANAN, in his _Survey of Bhagulpore_, p. 503, says that solitary males of the wild buffalo, “when driven from the herd by stronger competitors for female society, are reckoned very dangerous to meet with; for they are apt to wreak their vengeance on whatever they meet, and are said to kill annually three or four people.” LIVINGSTONE relates the same of the solitary hippopotamus, which becomes soured in temper, and wantonly attacks the passing canoes. (_Travels in South Africa_, p. 231.) [76] Letter from Major SKINNER.