CHAPTER VI. 



THE HARE TWO KINDS BEWITCHED BEATS THE DRUM PROLIFIC 

 SUPRA-FECUND ATION REARED BY A DOG WEARS STAYS SINGULAR 

 SUPERSTITION. 



THERE was a sprinkling of hares about Ronnum. With 

 proper dogs I might have killed a considerable number in 

 the course of the season ; but not having anything in the 

 shape of a harrier, it was only a straggler that I picked up. 

 Though those animals are not abundant anywhere in Scan- 

 dinavia, they are found throughout its length and breadth, 

 from Scania to the North Cape itself. 



When my former work was written, only one kind of 

 hare, the Lepus borealis of Pallas, was supposed to be indi- 

 genous to Scandinavia. But Nilsson, in the last edition of 

 his Fauna, published in 1847, now seems of opinion that two 

 species exist in the peninsula. The one kind he calls the 

 Mo-hare, or Syd-hare (Lepus canescens, Nilss.) ; the other, 

 the Fjall-hare, or Nord-hare (Lepus borealis, Nilss.) : 

 the former, as one of its names would imply, inhabiting 

 the more southern parts of the country ; the latter, the 



