LEPORID^ 167 



Habits: — The habits of hares and rabbits are very variable. 

 Hares are solitary, or at least not sociable. Even if feeding 

 together they separate if pursued, and trust to the secretions of 

 their glands for again discovering each other. Rabbits are very 

 sociable and live in large parties ; they have no glands, since 

 they do not normally stray far away from their burrows. Where 

 food is abundant, few species wander much, but spend a life 

 of peaceful monotony, feeding for the most part by night, and 

 sleeping or playing in the hours of daylight. Those inhabiting 

 mountains or cold districts may migrate to milder or more 

 sheltered districts in winter ; and more extensive movements 

 have been reported and are, no doubt, due to exceptional 

 circumstances, such as scarcity of food perhaps consequent on 

 overgrowth of population. 



The prey of all carnivorous animals and birds, the hares 

 exhibit a rare combination of speed with staying powers, 

 together with exceptional powers of dodging and out- 

 manoeuvring an enemy of superior pace. So secure are they, 

 that the Brown Hare rarely seeks better shelter than a wood 

 or thicket. Blue and Irish Hares more readily hide in holes, 

 but no British hare constructs a permanent burrow. All of them 

 will keep on running from an enemy until they die. But 

 rabbits, although also possessed of considerable, although 

 inferior speed, trust for safety to burrows, which they readily 

 dig for themselves. 



In accordance with the above differences of habit, the young 

 at birth differ considerably. Those of the British hares being- 

 born above ground, without artificial nest of any kind, are fully 

 formed miniatures of their parents ; those of the rabbit, being 

 dropped in the recesses of a (frequently special nesting) burrow, 

 are at first naked, blind, and deaf; they repose on a warm bed 

 made partly of their mother's own wool, and are at first safely 

 blocked up in the burrow by her. The habits of some exotic 

 species are intermediate in that, although the young are born 

 above ground like those of our hares, they are placed in a nest 

 like that of a rabbit. 



The animals are polygamous, or rather promiscuous breeders. 

 They generally produce several young at a birth, and the 

 numbers of litters that may issue from a single female is limited 



