THE BLACK-NAPED HARE 



been terribly damaged by the '500 express bullet 

 with which I shot it. 



A forest officer in Malabar, in whose house I 

 once spent several days, possessed at the time a 

 tame specimen of the very handsome leopard cat 

 so at least my friend, who was a sportsman, and 

 to some extent a naturalist, termed it. Sterndale 

 says that the leopard cat (Felis Bengalensis] is 

 untameable, and he quotes Jerdon, Blyth, and 

 Hutton in support of this dictum. The cat I 

 refer to agreed in colouring with the description 

 of that species given by Sterndale, but it was 

 quite tame, wandered about the house and grounds 

 at will, sometimes absented itself for several days, 

 but always returned. One peculiar, and rather 

 disgusting, habit of this animal was always to 

 select a wash-hand basin of water, for the purpose 

 of defecating. 



THE BLACK-NAPED HARE (Lepus nigricollis} 



This hare, which in size and colour approaches 

 more nearly to the blue, or arctic, species in its 

 summer coat than to the familiar English brown 

 hare (albeit lighter and yellower in colour than the 

 former), is common in Mysore, where I occasionally 

 shot it in large forests, in scrub jungles, on the 

 plains, and when snipe -shooting in dry grass 

 adjacent to the wet land. 



Hares, as food, afford a pleasant variety in a 

 country which does not offer a great diversity of 

 viands, and are therefore worth shooting. They 



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