LEPUS 295 



Btill. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., New York, xix., iv., 31st March 

 IQ 03. l 57) an d Khingan Mountains, Northern Manchuria 

 (Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., December 1909, 504). 



There are two living British species, the Irish Hare, L. 

 hibernicus and the Scottish or Blue Hare, a sub-species of 

 L. timidus, the range of which latter, regarded as a species, 

 includes all arctic Europe to an unknown point in corresponding 

 latitudes in Siberia. In Norway it has, according to Collett, 

 a wider distribution than any other game animal, being more 

 or less frequent from the seashore to the edge of the snow on 

 the fjelds ; in the islands, however, it is unevenly present and 

 apparently not native, though it usually thrives well where 

 introduced, despite the attacks of its chief enemies, the sea- 

 eagles and eagle-owls ; it occasionally visits Denmark, by 

 crossing the ice from Skane in Sweden. In Finmarken it 

 reaches the extreme north of the mainland, but is rare on the 

 furthest coastline (Collett). In Russia it ranges south to 

 55° N. lat., and is found in West Prussia and Lithuania 

 (Blasius). It has an isolated colony in the Alps (L. t. varronis 

 of Miller), but has been incorrectly credited to the Pyrenean 

 fauna (see Trutat, Bull. Soc. d Hist. Nat., Toulouse, xii., 1878, 

 1 10) ; there is a doubt also if it occurs in the Caucasus. 



Distribution in time :— Although remains of hares are plentiful 

 in British and west European deposits of late pleistocene age, 

 all those that have been satisfactorily determined belong to some 

 form of true Lepus ; the group Eulagos, as has been already 

 shown on p. 259, being entirely unrepresented. The varying 

 hares were widely distributed in late pleistocene times, and 

 ranged to the south of England, and in continental Europe 

 as far south as Parignana, Italy (Forsyth Major, Atti. Soc. Sci. 

 Nat. Ital., xv., 390). They are thus shown to be older, and 

 the brown hares newer inhabitants of the country. 



Hinton showed that the fossil skulls from the late pleisto- 

 cene deposits of Ightham Fissure, Kent (op. cit. sztpra, 

 p. 259), belonged to animals resembling the Irish Hare, 

 but distinguishable by larger size and robuster skeleton, 

 characters shared by all other specimens from the English 

 Pleistocene. Hinton could not unite any British specimens 

 with fossil hares described from continental localities, the 



