272 LEPORID^— LEPUS 



turnip fields, in stubbles, or amongst long grass and herbage ; 

 there are others when it affects naked fallows and ploughed 

 fields. Sometimes it remains in its form, 1 close crouched until 

 almost trampled on ; it then lies wide awake and alert of eye, but 

 with flattened body, fore legs drawn back, hind legs concealed, 

 thighs prominent, and ears lying flat V-like on either side of 

 the neck ; at other times, especially when bad weather has made 

 it wakeful, it is off long before a sportsman can approach within 

 gunshot. As the hour of the natural evening emergence 

 approaches it becomes wilder and more easily disturbed. In 

 time of snow it often lies still until completely covered, and 

 will not stir until compelled by hunger; 2 or it may sit at the 

 end of a tunnel in a snow-drift. 3 



The demeanour of a hare when startled in the open is 

 strikingly different from the low, crouching attitude which it 

 generally adopts when in its form. On hearing an unusual 

 sound, its first impulse is to sit upright with erected ears and 

 reconnoitre ; afterwards it may endeavour to conceal itself by 

 squatting close to the ground, by skulking away with depressed 

 ears, or it may at once take flight. As a rule the alarm is only 

 partial, and the hare gallops off, holding itself well in hand, 

 its rump thrown high at each leap by the spare driving power 

 of its long hind legs ; its ears are widely open, erect, and 

 pricked forwards ; its eyes, which are set so far apart as to 

 see separately, observe only backwards. Should the danger not 

 be considered serious, the animal may again halt, stand up 

 erect on its hind legs, and at intervals continue its progress 

 to the shelter of some covert. 



If really frightened, the animal goes away at its best pace, 

 wasting no time in looking about it ; but it is only as a last 

 resource, as on the near approach of a brace of hounds, that it 

 closes down its ears along its back — a sign that there is no time 

 to observe aught but the terror to the rear — and prepares to 



1 There is a vivid description in classical Greek of a hare lying at rest in her 

 form, in Xenophon's Cynegeticus, v., 10. 



2 H. E. Forrest notes that in the Bala district of North Wales many hares 

 perished in the severe frost of February 1895 {Fauna of North Wales, 57). Some- 

 times the animals become so encumbered with frozen balls of snow in their hair as 

 to be easily captured. 



3 Richard Kearton, With Nature and a Camera, 1898, 176. 



