734 APPENDIX. 



animals in the middle ages, declares himself of opinion that 

 c rabbits were introduced into England in or just before the 

 thirteenth century.' 



I have never found the remains of the rabbit in any surroundings 

 earlier than those of Saxon times; but difficult as it may be to 

 prove the positive fact of the contemporaneity of a burrowing 

 animal with a deposit into which it is possible it may have 

 burrowed, it is more difficult still to prove the negative fact of 

 its absence from an entire country at any one particular period. 

 Further, the comparatively small size of the rabbit makes the 

 matter still more difficult than it is as regards the fallow deer, 

 or the elm and vine and chestnut, which we may speak of as 

 having been probably introduced or reintroduced by the Romans. 

 And, thirdly, as a much larger portion of Britain was occupied 

 in earlier than in later times by woodland which would furnish 

 protection and harbour to the mustelida, the martens, weasel, 

 stoat, and polecat, the natural enemies and most effectual destroyers 

 of the rabbit, we can understand how this latter animal has 

 escaped the ordinary fate of/me naturae and become more abundant 

 in this country concomitantly with the increase of its human occu- 

 pants, and the curtailment of its woods and forests 1 . The re- 



ranging only for short distances, they would form a circle with a very rapidly widening 

 circumference in the absence or paucity of natural enemies. Literary evidence in the 

 same direction is furnished by the beautiful lines of our fourteenth -century poet, 

 Chaucer, in the ' Romaunt of the Rose/ ed. Bell, 1855, vol. vii. p. 60 : 

 ' Conies there were also playing 



That comen out of her claperes, 



Of sondry coloures and maneres, 



And maden many a turneying 



Upon the freshe gras sprynging/ 



So also in the 'Assembly of Foules/ vol. iv. p. 196, in a parallel passage of equal beauty 

 we have the line 



'The pretty conies to hir playe gan hie.* 



Whence it would appear that the animal in question was a familiar object to English 

 eyes in those days. I take this opportunity of remarking that an acquaintance with the 

 line next but one to that just quoted, 



' The dredef ul roe, the buck, the hart, the hind/ 



would have made the suggestion that the fallow deer was introduced into England no 

 earlier than the time of James I. an impossibility. For the introduction of the fallow 

 deer into Britain, see Professor Boyd Dawkins, Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond., June 17, 1868, 

 p. 515; 'Nature/ Dec. 10, 1874, Jan. 21, 1875; Jeitteles, ibid., Nov. 26, 1874; Sir 

 V. Brooke, ibid., Jan. 14, 1875. 



1 From British coins the rabbit is as entirely absent as is the beehive ; see p. 729 

 supra. Of Spanishcoins, on the ot her hand, Spanheim (De Prsestantia et TJsu, vol. i. 

 p. 179), in a passage pointed out to me by Mr. Evans, says it may be taken 'index velut 

 ac tessera,' inuch as the dolphin is of Italian seaports and the owl of Athens and her 

 colonies. Dr. Whitaker however, in his ' History of Manchester/ may overstrain the 



