96 THE COMMON HARE 



winter months and in frosty weather when food is scarce ; then 

 they will peel off the bark of young trees of stake or even pole 

 thickness of stem, exhibiting preference for ash, aspen, beech, elm, 

 hornbeam, maple, oak, and sycamore. Conifers generally attract 

 hares in less degree than broad-leaved trees, in particular Scots and 

 Austrian pines and spruce, Corsican pine being rarely attacked. 

 But in comparatively unwooded tracts, like many of the English, 

 Welsh and Scottish moors, it is often appalling to see the damage 

 inflicted on larch, pines, and spruce, during hard winters, in young 

 plantations, as the hares flock from the neighbouring hill-districts 

 and moors in such numbers as to render afforestation practically im- 

 possible without wire-netting protection. On the residential portions 

 of estates and in ornamental coverts and parks, wherever they have 

 marked opportunities of choice, hares single out the papilionaceous 

 species of trees, such as the thorn acacia (Robinia pseudacacia) , 



FIG. 62. THE COMMON HARE. 



honey locust (Gleditschia triacanthos), and even the assumed poison- 

 ous Scots and common Laburnums (L. alpinum and L. vulgare), 

 for gnawing and stripping off the bark of the stems. Hares also nip 

 off, apparently for mere mischief, the shoots in woods and planta- 

 tions, and those of shrubs and trees in nurseries, shrubberies and 

 gardens, thus checking their growth, so that they never attain their 

 proper shape and size, forest trees being ruined as regards produc- 

 ing timber. In winter time, during severe frost and the ground 

 snow-covered, hares nibble and devour the young growths of coni- 

 fers, broad-leaved trees and shrubs, both deciduous and evergreen, 



