THE COMMON RABBIT 193 



will do great harm in coverts, barking the 

 young trees as high as they can reach, but, 

 however bad the weather, they will manage to 

 pull through. The only thing that really does 

 upset them is continued rain, as the young can- 

 not stand too much damp. A wet spring 

 invariably reduces the rabbit population more 

 than the efforts of all the rabbit-catchers put 

 together, and a dry one has a correspondingly 

 beneficial effect. 



Taken altogether, the rabbit is an amazingly 

 successful animal ; it increases and flourishes in 

 great numbers, despite the quantities we kill 

 and the other animals that live on it. It is found 

 everywhere from the sand-hills of the seashore 

 to the mountain valley, and, as said before, it 

 is a feature of every woodland, for which latter 

 reason this chapter has been devoted to it. 



(The rabbit is scientifically known as Oryctolagus 

 cuniculus, Linn., and is divided into two sub-species : 

 O. c. cuniculus of Northern Europe and a smaller 

 lighter-coloured rabbit found in the Mediterranean 

 region, which has been dubbed O. c. huxleyi, Haeckel.) 



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