356 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



It is evident that the show-fight instinct cannot have been 

 developed in Himalayan rabbits by means of natural selection, 

 but it is no less evident that if it ever arose in wild rabbits it 

 would be preserved and intensified by such means. 



The following observation of my own on a previously 

 unnoticed instinct displayed by wild rabbits is, I think, of 

 sufficient interest to render. Most people are aware that 

 if a rabbit is shot near the mouth of its burrow, the 

 animal will employ the last remnant of its life in struggling 

 into it. Having several times observed that wounded 

 rabbits which had thus escaped appeared again several 

 days afterwards above ground, lying dead a few feet from 

 the mouth of the burrow, I wished to ascertain whether 

 the wounded animals had themselves come out before 

 dying, possibly for air, or had been taken out by their 

 companions. I therefore shot numerous rabbits while 

 they were sitting near their burrows, taking care that the 

 distance between the gun and the animal should be such 

 as to insure a speedy, though not an immediate death. 

 Having marked the burrows at which I shot rabbits in 

 this manner I returned to them at intervals for a fort- 

 night or more, and found that about one-half of the 

 bodies appeared again on the surface in the way described. 

 That this reappearance above ground is not due to the 

 victim's own exertions, I am now quite satisfied ; for not 

 only did two or three days generally elapse before the 

 body thus showed itself a period much too long for a 

 severely wounded rabbit to survive but in a number of 

 cases decomposition had set in. Indeed, on one occasion 

 scarcely anything of the animal was left save the skin 

 and bones. This was in a large warren. 



It is a curious thing that I have hitherto been unable 

 to get any bodies returned to the surface, of rabbits 

 which I inserted into their burrows after death. I account 

 for this by supposing that the stench of the decomposing 

 carcass is not so intolerable to the other occupants of the 

 burrow when it is near the orifice as it is when further 

 in. Similarly, I find that there is not so good a chance 

 of bodies being returned from an extensive warren of 

 intercommunicating holes, as there is from smaller war- 



