!6 4 leporid^: 



writers. 1 Apart from the pelage, which will be described under 

 each species, the young have usually been distinguished from 

 the adults by a number of characters. The ears tear easily, the 

 cleft of the lip is narrow, the claws are smooth, short, and sharp, 

 the under-jaw breaks easily if the two divisions are pressed 

 together at the posterior end, and the heads (epiphyses) of the 

 bones of the "knees," which are really the wrists or carpal 

 joints, of the fore legs, are not fused, so that the thumb-nail 

 may be inserted between them. In old animals the ears are 

 dry and tough, the cleft of the lips is spreading, the claws are 

 long, blunt, and rugged, the under-jaw will not easily break, 

 and the heads of the bones of the carpal joints are so close 

 together as to leave no space between them large enough for 

 insertion of the thumb-nail. 



After a careful examination of the above points, I find the 

 tearing of the ears the most useful test of complete maturity, 

 and it is one that is in use amongst poulterers. The ears 

 remain " tender " after the jaw has become sufficiently ossified 

 to resist reasonable pressure. Dimensions are not very reliable, 

 for the animals vary a good deal in different localities, and it 

 must be remembered that the vast majority of hares and rabbits 

 are immature, so that old individuals may almost be regarded 

 as exceptional. 



White spots on the forehead are rather frequent in all the 

 British species, and are by some regarded as indicative of 

 youth, by others of mature age (as by Drane in the case of the 

 Brown Hare), and they actually appear to be characteristic 

 both of the very young and very old. A fanciful notion that 

 they are connected with the number of young in a litter does 

 not appear to possess any real value. 



In the skull the superciliary processes of the frontals 

 probably afford the best means of distinguishing between 

 young and old. These processes are at first slender and 

 narrow, and their free ends enclose well-marked spaces. Later 

 they grow broad and heavy and the tips may meet and fuse with 



1 " Men know by the outer side of the hare's leg if she is passed a year. And 

 so men should know of a hound, of a fox, and of a wolf, by a little bone that they 

 have in a bone which is next the sinews, where there is a little cavity." {The 

 Master of Game, translated from the French of Gaston de Foix of about 1387, 

 Baillie-Grohmann's ed. 1904, 12, writing probably of the pisiform bone and the tendon 

 of the flexor carpi ulnaris.) 



