270 Mr. Thompson on the Irish Hare. 



which marine plants only vegetated ; and had one of them remained undisturbed 

 for only a few minutes longer, she would, without resorting to swimming, have 

 been cut off from the mainland until the tide had ebbed, the rocks being insu- 

 lated for at least the half of every twelve hours. 



Were such instances as the one mentioned of the hare swimming across the 

 stream, rather than go a short way about, general, (which they are not asserted 

 to be,) it would seem that when undisturbed, this animal has less aversion to swim- 

 ming than to leaping, as by its disinclination to the latter exertion, by far the greater 

 portion killed in the higher grounds of Ireland fall victims. When a few stones 

 are removed from the base of the loose mountain-walls, though their entire height 

 be very inconsiderable, the hare will take advantage of the opening, rather than 

 leap the wall ; a habit so universally known, that by snares placed in these aper- 

 tures they are easily secured, and chiefly when going to, or returning from their 

 feeding ground. On this habit a difference was observed by a person employed 

 as gamekeeper in the neighbourhood of Belfast, and who had previously served 

 in the same capacity in Scotland. This man remarked, with some surprise, that 

 in a field where hares were generally numerous, and which was separated from a 

 plantation, where they were preserved by a mill-race, over which was a wooden 

 pipe, that they invariably, when disturbed, ran for, and crossed over it, rather 

 than leap the race, which the Scotch hare would have done. Although it has 

 been thought proper to mention such trivial facts, yet no stress is laid upon them, 

 as we find many animals very much influenced by immediate circumstances. 



In the descriptions of the Lepus timidus I have read, there is not any 

 notice of their herding together when numerous ; but the intelligent game- 

 keeper before alluded to, states, that in Northamptonshire he has frequently seen 

 them when driven out of a plantation congregate together, to the number of 

 about thirty, in the open ground. Where the Irish hares abound, their grega- 

 rious propensity is a marked character. In several demesnes in the north of 

 Ireland, when they were carefully preserved, they, on becoming plentiful, herded 

 together like deer, and thus have I repeatedly seen from one to three hundred 

 moving together in one body like these animals. In all these demesnes they 

 eventually increased to such an extent as to prove most destructive to the plan- 

 tations, &c., and were consequently destroyed in great numbers ; from a demesne 

 in the County of Down they on several occasions have been sent into Belfast 



