142 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
LEPUS TIMIDUS Z. COMMON HARE. 
The Common Hare is, and seems from time immemorial to 
have been, one of the best-known of our low-country animals. 
The volumes of the “ Old Statistical Account” testify to its 
former abundance in the district, and no doubt the protection 
afforded by the game-laws, and the destruction of its natural 
enemies, tended to still further increase its numbers during 
the present century.. A turn of the tide, however, has set in 
since the passing of the Ground Game Act in 1880, which 
gives the farmer the right to kill hares on the land he occupies. 
The result, which the proprietors are naturally enough deplor- 
ing, has been a marked decrease in most localities, in some 
amounting almost to extinction. In the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of Edinburgh, fifteen years ago, I am certain I used 
to see twenty for every one observed at the present day. As 
a rule, it is now only where the grounds in the proprietor’s 
own hands are of large extent that the Hare is to be seen in 
numbers. A close time, say from some date in February to a 
corresponding date in September, is urgently needed. 
Though mainly an inhabitant of the plains, it occurs in 
the valleys of all our hill-ranges, extending in summer up 
the slopes of the hills themselves, even encroaching on the 
pastures of its congener, the Mountain Hare. 
Coursing—the chasing of hares with greyhounds—is a 
favourite sport in the district. A pack of harriers also hunts 
the east of Fife, and there is at the present time a pack of 
beagles in Linlithgowshire. 
Fleming tells us that in Scotland the skins were formerly 
“collected by itinerant dealers, and annually sold in the 
February market at Dumfries, sometimes to the amount of 
30,000” (“ British Animals,” p. 21). 
LEPUS VARIABILIS Pall. MouNTAIN HARE. 
North of the Forth the Mountain Hare is abundant and 
indigenous among the Grampians, where I have seen it on 
many occasions, especially on the hills near Callander. 
Colquhoun, from what he says in his “ Lecture on the Fere 
