A Sportsman 261 



drives take place by concerted action over large tracts 

 of land, without dogs or guns, by the assembled people 

 of the district. An enclosure is made in the form of 

 a sheep-shearer's clipper; a circle almost enclosed, with 

 blades or arms extending out for an indefinite distance. 

 The beaters, distributed on the outside of a number 

 of square miles, of which the pen and extended arms 

 are the centre, work toward it, driving all the hares, 

 and often some other game which may be included, 

 into the entrance passage, and on to the terminating 

 circle entrance, where all are securely held by the clos- 

 ing of the narrowed passage-way. Incredible as it may 

 seem, many thousands of hares are thus gathered in at 

 a single drive, which are easily despatched with clubs. 

 This same method was in vogue in the early days of 

 Australia, by which thousands of kangaroos were 

 penned up and slaughtered by the sheep men, and the 

 same method has been pursued in various countries 

 for many kinds of animals, up to and including the 

 African buffaloes and elephants. 



Why the California hares have not so plentifully 

 increased in the northern part of the State as in the 

 southern is difficult to explain, and why the little cot- 

 ton-tailed rabbit which are such a scourge in Australia 

 have not increased in California, where they were intro- 

 duced many years ago, is difficult to understand. 



Hare coursing is one of the oldest sports known, 

 of which we have evidence in the representations on 

 the Egyptian monuments and in the drawings and ref- 

 erences in Persian literature, and those shown would 

 indicate that but little change had occurred in the 

 bodily form of the greyhound, excepting in the 

 fringing, shaggy hair, which now has its representations 



