SUPRA-FECUNDATION. 93 



The fact of the female hare pairing within a very few days 

 after she has littered, is curious enough; but that when 

 already pregnant, she should be capable of new conception, 

 as asserted by many to be the case, is passing strange. 

 Though this has been a mooted point with naturalists 

 for ages, it seems not yet fully solved. Nilsson, when allud- 

 ing to the subject in the last edition of his Fauna, though he 

 does not commit himself in any way, nevertheless says: 

 " From my own experience, I am unable to testify to such being 

 the fact. But a sportsman, whose veracity I cannot doubt, 

 has assured me that he once shot a gravid female hare, and 

 found, on opening her, five full-grown young ones in the one 

 sack of the womb (the latter, as with all Rodentia being 

 divided into two), and four in the other, which were not 

 larger than the joint of one's thumb. Another of my ac- 

 quaintance shot on the 7th of December, some years ago, a 

 female hare, which had four young ones within her, of which 

 two were small, and still naked, whilst the other two were 

 large and hairy." 



The question as to whether the hare be a ruminant 

 animal or not, is also still mooted in Sweden. Linnaeus 

 tells us that such is the case, though in an inferior degree to 

 the Pecora, which have a stomach of four cavities, whereas 

 the hare has only two ; that the hare macerates the 

 food in one cavity, and digests it in the other. There are 

 those who entertain the same opinion as Linnaeus ; but 

 others again do not admit that the hare chews the cud, or 

 has two cavities in the stomach. 



As hares are shot all the year round in Sweden, it often- 

 times happens that the young are taken alive from the 

 stomach of the dead parent. And it would seem from what 



