COMMON HARE 81 



the slopes of the hills themselves, even encroaching on the 

 pastures of its congener, the Mountain Hare. 



Coursing — the chasing of hares with greyhounds — is a 

 favourite sport in the district. A pack of harriers also hunts 

 the east of Fife, and there is at the present time a pack of 

 beagles in Linlithgowshire. 



Fleming tells us that in Scotland the skins were formerly 

 "collected by itinerant dealers, and annually sold in the 

 February market at Dumfries, sometimes to the amount of 

 30,000" ("British Animals," p. 21). 



MOUNTAIN HARE. 



Lepus variabilis Pall. 



North of the Forth the Mountain Hare is abundant and 

 indigenous among the Grampians, where I have seen it on 

 many occasions, especially on the hills near Callander. 

 Colquhoun, from what he says in his " Lecture on the Ferae 

 Naturae of the British Islands," would have us understand 

 that in his young days it was very scarce on the Loch Lomond 

 hills. In 1822 he " had shot over the whole rugged ground 

 at the head of Loch Lomond without moving a single blue 

 hare, barring the hermit on Ben Voirla's crags." It is in- 

 cluded, however, in an excellent list of the animals of the 

 parish of Luss, written nearly thirty years before the above 

 date (" Old Statistical Account," xvii., p. 247). Farther east 

 I observed one — still very white — in the third week of April 

 1891 on a high ridge of the Ochils above Tillicoultry, and 

 learned from a shepherd that the species is fairly numerous 

 on that range. 



South of the Forth it is abundant on most of the higher 



