240 LEPORID^E— LEPUS 



led to the remarkable idea that the sex is frequently changed ; 

 which may be compared with the " widespread African belief 

 that hyaenas are bisexual, being male or female as they choose " 

 (Roosevelt, African Game Trails, 1910, 329). This error 

 appears in writers of different periods, and is said to have sur- 

 vived until the end of the eighteenth century. 1 Amongst others, 

 Pliny repeated it, saying that hares are of both sexes, and that 

 the female can bear young without the male ; and in the 

 Gwentian code of north - east Wales, supposed to be of the 

 eleventh century, the animals are said, not to be capable of 

 any legal valuation, being in one month male and in another 

 female. It is, therefore, not surprising that in many of the older 

 works the masculine and feminine pronouns are indiscrimin- 

 ately applied to them, as was the practice of William Twici, and 

 also of The Master of Game (see p. 247). 



Hares are often regarded as beasts of ill omen, and there is 

 a widespread belief that, if one crosses the path, the journey 

 should be abandoned for that day. This superstition may be 

 traced back at least to the French sporting writer du Fouilloux, 

 who believed that a meeting with either hare or partridge when 

 starting out in the morning to harbour a stag would be to 

 augur a bad day's sport {La Venerie, v., 22). Similarly, in some 

 parts of Scotland and Ireland (e.g. in Connemara, Browne, Proc. 

 Roy. Irish Acad., v., 1899, 260) the name of the hare must not 

 be uttered in the hearing of fishermen. On the other hand, 

 according to Millais (hi., 21), the Scottish people consider it a 

 lucky thing when a hare starts from the last patch of grain to 

 fall, and the animal is by them regarded as the spirit of the 

 corn. This last portion of the harvest to be cut is called "the 

 hare," and the man who cuts it is said to have "caught the 

 hare." This contradictory mixture of good and evil omens 

 seems to have descended from very ancient times, the animal 

 having been associated with ill-luck amongst the Greeks and 

 Indians, but with fertility of the land amongst the Friesians 

 (Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, 1909, 216). 



The cleft upper lip is no doubt responsible for the popular 

 idea that the mother of a child born with a hare-lip must have 



1 Cf. Merriam's statement of the American Lepus bairdii, that all the males have 

 teats and take part in suckling the young (6th Ann. Rep. U.S. Geol. Survey, 1873, 667). 



