180 Rev. W. Houghton on the Babbit 



hair on the inside of its cheeks (iii. 10. § 13) ; its milk, like 

 that of ruminating animals, contains rennet, and is therefore 

 useful in diarrhoea (iii. 16. § 6) ; the female Ba<TV7rov<i in coition 

 often mounts upon the male (v. 2. § 1) ; it produces its 

 young at all seasons, and becomes pregnant a second time 

 while previously pregnant ; it has young every month ; as 

 soon as the young are born, copulation again takes place, 

 and the female conceives while giving milk, which is as thick 

 as that of the sow ; the young are born blind (vi. 28. § 3) ; 

 if a haavirov^ be taken into Ithaca, it will not live, but will 

 be found dead on the sea-coast, with its face turned towards 

 the spot from which it was brought (viii. 27. § 2) ; there is a 

 kind of hacrv'irov<;j near Lake Bolba and in other places, which 

 has its liver so divided as to look like two livers (ii. 12. §3). 

 The only passages that call for attention are those in Avhich 

 Aristotle speaks of the haavirov; having hair inside its cheeks, 

 and of its producing its young, which are bom blind, every 

 montli : the former statement is true of the hare, the latter of 

 the rabbit. But Aristotle is so frequently in error with regard 

 to matters of common observation, and is often so prone to 

 hasty generalization, as to lead me to infer that by the term 

 haavirov^ he understood a hare, and believed that this animal 

 produces its young ones blind, and more frequently than is 

 really the case. As he nowhere alludes to the burrowing 

 habits of a leporine animal, it is hardly likely that he was 

 acquainted Avith the rabbit. 



Neither, again, does Xenophon, so minutely graphic in his 

 description of the hare, and hare-hunting, ever allude to the 

 rabbit. Living, as the old general did for many years, as a 

 Greek squire, in his house at Scillus, in the game-abounding 

 district of Elis, Xenophon must have made some remarks on 

 an animal so closely allied to, and yet diifering in some re- 

 markable ways from, his favourite hare, had he been acquainted 

 with it. 



The earliest Greek writer, so far as I have been able to 

 ascertain, who distinctly alludes to the rabbit, is Polybius the 

 historian {circ. B.C. 204). Speaking of the natural history of 

 Corsica, he says the only animals found wild there are foxes, 

 wild sheep, and rabbits {kvvlkXoi,) . He thus describes the 

 KvvLKko<i : — '^ At a distance it looks like a small hare ; but 

 when you take it into your hands, there is a great difference 

 between the two, both in appearance and flavour ; it lives for 

 the most part underground. (Histor. xii. 2.) Polybius was 

 a traveller, and had, no doubt, seen the rabbits he so well de- 

 scribes. 



Rabbits are mentioned expressly by Strabo [circ. B.C. 50) 



