THE RABBIT. 



183 



The Hare {Lepus timidus). 



It is a woDderfully cunning animal, and is said by many who have 

 closely studied its habits to surpass the fox in ready ingenuity. Appear- 

 ing to understand the method by 

 which the hounds are enabled to 

 track its footsteps, it employs the 

 most crafty manoeuvres for the pur- 

 pose of throwing them off the scent. 

 Sometimes it will run forward for 

 a considerable distance, and then, 

 after returning for a few hundred 

 yards on the same track, will make 

 a great leap at right angles to its 

 former course, and lie quietly hid- 

 den while the hounds run past its 

 spot of concealment. It then jumps 

 back to its track, and steals quietly 

 out of sight in one direction, while 

 the hounds are going in the other. 



The Hare does not live in burrows, like the rabbit, but only makes 

 a slight depression in the ground, in which she lies so flatly pressed to 

 the earth that she can hardly be distinguished from the soil and dried 

 herbage among which she has taken up her temporary abode. 



It is a tolerably prolific animal, beginning to breed when only a year 

 old, and producing four or five young at a litter. The young Hares — 

 or " leverets," as they are technically termed — are born with their eyes 

 open, and covered with hair. For the space of four or five weeks they 

 remain under the care of their mother, but after that time they sep- 

 arate, and depend upon themselves for subsistence. 



Resembling the hare in general appearance and in many of its habits, 

 the Rabbit is readily distinguished from that animal by its smaller 

 dimensions, its different color, its shorter and uniformly brown ears, 

 and its shorter limbs. 



The Rabbit is one of the most familiar of British quadrupeds, 

 having taken firm possession of the soil into w^hich it has been 

 imported, and multiplied to so great an extent that its numbers can 

 hardly be kept within proper bounds without annual and wholesale 

 massacres. As it is more tamable than the hare, it has long been 

 ranked amongst the chief of domestic pets, and has been so modified by 

 careful management that it has developed itself into many permanent 

 varieties, which vvould be considered as different species by one who 

 saw them for the first time. 



The burrows in which the Rabbit lives are extremely irregular in 

 their construction, and often communicate with each other to a re- 

 markable extent. 



From many of its foes the Rabbit escapes by diving suddenly into 



