Chap. IV. THEIR VARIATION. 109 



believed to be quite fertile together, and a perfect gradation 

 can be shown to exist from the largest domestic kinds, having 

 enormously developed ears, to the common wild kind. The 

 parent-form must have been a burrowing animal, a habit not 

 common, as far as I can discover, to any other species in the 

 large genus Lepus. Only one wild species is known with 

 certainty to exist in Europe ; but the rabbit (if it be a true 

 rabbit) from Mount Sinai, and likewise that from Algeria, 

 present slight differences ; and these forms have been con- 

 sidered by some authors as specifically distinct. 6 But such 

 slight differences would aid us little in explaining the more 

 considerable differences characteristic of the several domestic 

 races. If the latter are the descendants of two or more closely 

 allied species, these, with the exception of the common rabbit, 

 have been exterminated in a wild state ; and this is very im- 

 probable, seeing with what pertinacity this animal holds its 

 ground. From these several reasons we may infer with 

 safety that all the domestic breeds are the descendants of the 

 common wild species. But from what we hear of the mar- 

 vellous success in France in rearing hybrids between the 

 hare and rabbit, 7 it is possible, though not probable, from the 

 great difficulty in making the first cross, that some of the 

 larger races, which are coloured like the hare, may have been 

 modified by crosses with this animal. Nevertheless, the chief 

 differences in the skeletons of the several domestic breeds 

 cannot, as we shall presently see, have been derived from a 

 cross with the hare. 



There are many breeds which transmit their characters 

 more or less truly. Every one has seen the enormous lop- 

 eared rabbits exhibited at our shows ; various allied sub- 

 breeds are reared on the Continent, such as the so-called 

 Andalusian, which is said to have a large head with a round 

 forehead, and to attain a greater size than any other kind ; 

 another large Paris breed is named the Eouennais, and has a 



accounts of perfect success in taming feres,' torn. i. p. 292. 

 and breeding from the wild rabbit. 7 See Dr. P. Broca's interesting 

 See also Dr. P. Broca, in ' Journal de memoir on this subject in Brown- 

 la Physiologie,' torn. ii. p. 368. Sequard's ' Journ. de. Phys.,' vol. ii. 

 6 Gervais, ' Hist. Nat. des Mammi- p. 367. 



