THE RABBIT 351 



summer-time, and if you hold her up to the light you will 

 see her bare skin. She is more free from milk in the 

 summer too. 



Apart from the breeding, hedge-rabbits live in their bur- 

 rows, often placed in a hedgerow. They always have one 

 gallery to escape by, but some have many more, certain 

 galleries being blind alleys. The number of "eyes," too, 

 is no indication of the number of rabbits in a burrow; for 

 after searching twenty or thirty holes with ferrets, perhaps 

 only a brace of rabbits will be found. Their galleries are 

 about three or four feet long, and turn in all directions — 

 the rabbit sometimes being protected from an enemy by 

 only a few inches of crust, for his burrow may work up- 

 wards, being really but an inch deep. When the hedges 

 are thin they take to the open fields for their burrows, 

 being indifferent to the soil in which they burrow, be it 

 sand or clay. 



The young soon begin to nest for themselves. One old 

 rabbiter told me he once caught a young rabbit about three- 

 quarters grown with four young ones inside of her. As 

 a rule, the first two litters of the year breed the same 

 summer they are born — the first litter probably breeding 

 twice. 



During the day they either " lay up " in their burrows 

 or steal forth to feed, never going far, however, from their 

 "eyes" in search of food, thus differing from the hare. 

 But they never approach their young by day, but steal off 

 to them at dusk. 



The old bucks will fight in the same way as do hares, 

 knocking each other over, and wool-gathering, and you may 

 see them gambolling, copulating, and otherwise enjoying 

 themselves ; and should you disturb them, you will hear a 

 sharp signal of danger given by some old buck — a sharp 

 knock on the earth with his hind-legs, and away they all 

 scatter, for a rabbit can run as fast as a hare for a short 

 distance ; and all you see as you come up is a patch of 



