234 THE RABBIT 



of the Buccleuch domains, made no account of such 

 small deer, and in the caldron which Meg Merrilies 

 cooked in the haunted Kaim of Derncleugh, there 

 were hares and moor game, and partridges, and every- 

 thing else but rabbits. Even Richard Jefiferies, who 

 can wax eloquent over a leg of mutton and mealy 

 potatoes, and who must many a day have dined off 

 rabbit on the Wiltshire Downs, ungratefully says not 

 a word of it in its gastronomical aspects. In fact, 

 the only allusion we can call to mind in the whole 

 range of English domestic fiction is when the osten- 

 tatious and parsimonious Jawleyford tells Mr. Sponge, 

 on his return from hunting too late for lunch, that he 

 had missed a most excellent rabbit pie. 



But in the olden time, in the charters of free 

 warren granted by the Norman and Plantagenet 

 kings, and before the advent of the pheasant or the 

 preservation of the partridge, when rangers, fowlers, 

 and fishermen were always abroad questing in the 

 woodlands and on the meres, the rabbit received 

 special attention. Now a warren has come to mean 

 a space of ground entirely given up to him. Then he 

 was the smallest, but the most common, of the lesser 

 beasts of chase. The purveyors of the great barons, 

 who daily fed in their halls whole troops of hungry 

 retainers, found him extremely serviceable. More- 



