THE RABBIT OR CONY 181 



Aristotle (Historia Auimalium, ed. Thompson, 1910, vi. 33, 580 s1 , 5) 

 makes the curious statement concerning hares that " the young are born 

 blind, as is the case with the greater part of the fissipedes or toed 

 animals " ; but there can be no doubt that this was an error and not an 

 allusion to rabbits, the earliest known direct reference to which is that 

 of Polybius, as quoted above (p. 17S). Writing in Greek of Corsica in 

 204 B.C., he stated that, although there were no hares there, there 

 were other animals which he called kviukXoi (kunikloi), resembling 

 small hares, but greatly different when examined in the hand, and 

 burrowers in the ground. Some earlier allusions have not been 

 substantiated. Thus Darwin {Variation of Animals and Plants 

 under Domestication, 1868, 1, 103) remarks that rabbits are mentioned 

 in a translation of one of the books of the Chinese philosopher 

 Confucius, who was born in 550 B.C. I have been unable to find the 

 passage, but several authorities whom I have consulted are unanimous 

 that it refers not to the Rabbit, but to some species of hare. De 

 Mortillet also (Promenade an Musee de Saint-Germain, in Mate'riaux 

 pour IHistoi 're de I' 'Homme, Ann. 4, 1868, 10-12, 407) states that some 

 caged rabbits (" Des lapins en cage ") form part of an Egyptian bas- 

 relief of the fifth dynasty. I have consulted Wallis Budge and others 

 in regard to these, and there can be no doubt that the identification is 

 due to confusion with hares. 



Cuniculus next appears in the works of Roman writers of about the 

 first century B.C. Posidonius of Apamaea, historian and philosopher of 

 the beginning of that century, mentioned it in his History (as quoted 

 by Athenseus, Deiplinosophistce, Bk. ix.) ; the poet Catullus (Carmina, 

 xxxvii., 18) sang of Spain as a country full of rabbits and rabbit 

 holes : — " Tu . . . cuniculosae Celtiberise fili egnati ; " and Martial 

 (Epigrammata, xiii., 60) aptly described it in the lines " Gaudet in effossis 

 habitare cuniculus antris." Varro (op. cit. supra, p. 178), who flourished 

 between 116 and 27 B.C., states that it was found in Spain, and discusses 

 the derivation of its name. The geographer Strabo (Bohn Library, 

 1, 217), who was born about 63 B.C., notices (Geographica, Bk. iii., 

 c. 2, § 6 ; Hamilton and Falconer's translation) its abundance in the 

 Balearic Islands, 1 as well as in almost the whole of Iberia (Spain) ; it 

 extended to Marseilles, "infesting likewise the islands "and destroying 

 both seeds and trees, the latter by gnawing their roots. He states that 

 the inhabitants of the Balearics once despatched an embassy to the 



1 Twv 0' oXeOpiuv Qyjplwv (nrdvis irkr)v tQiv yewpvxw 



Of the destructive animals a scarcity except of the earth-burrowing 



Xaytdeuv [lagideon] oik Ivioi Xepriptdas [leberidas] wpoaayopeoijffi. 



little-hares which some leberides call-by-name. 



According to Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, Xepijpls may have been a Massiliote 

 word r for " rabbit." 



