for the use of their young, or
for their future support. Adanson, Voyage to Senegal. In this country
the parent Pigeons both male and female swallow the grain or other
seeds, which they collect for their young, and bring it up mixed with
a kind of milk from their stomachs, with their bills inserted into the
mouths of the young doves. J. Hunter's works.

The affection of the parent to the young in experienced mothers may be
in part owing to their having been relieved by them from the burden of
their milk; but it is difficult to understand, how this affection
commences in those mothers of the bestial world, who have not
experienced this relief from the sucking of their offspring; and still
more so to understand how female birds were at first induced to
incubate their eggs for many weeks; and lastly how caterpillars, as of
the silk-worm, are induced to cover themselves with a well-woven house
of silk before their transformation.

These as well as many other animal facts, which are difficult to
account for, have been referred to an inexplicable instinct; which is
supposed to preclude any further investigation: but as animals seem to
have undergone great changes, as well as the inanimate parts of the
earth, and are probably still in a state of gradual improvement; it is
not unreasonable to conclude, that some of these actions both of large
animals and of insects, may have been acquired in a state preceding
their present one; and have been derived from the parents to their
offspring by imitation, or other kind of tradition; thus the eggs of
the crocodile are at this day hatched by the warmth of the sun in
Egypt; and the eggs of innumerable insects, and the spawn of fish, and
of frogs, in this climate are hatched by the vernal warmth: this might
be the case of birds in warm climates, in their early state of
existence; and experience might have taught them to incubate their
eggs, as they became more perfect animals, or removed themselves into
colder climates: thus the ostrich is said to sit upon its eggs only in
the night in warm situations, and both day and night in colder ones.

This love of the mother in quadrupeds to the offspring, whom she licks
and cleans, is so allied to the pleasure of the taste or palate, that
nature seems to have had a great escape in the parent quadruped not
devouring her offspring. Bitches, and cats, and sows, eat the
placenta; and if a dead offspring occurs, I am told, that also is
sometimes ea