PAGES OF HARE LORE 43 



hay for fear of communicating any odour to the 

 snares which they set. 



More than forty years ago a Russian zoologist, 

 Middendorf, drew the attention of naturalists to the 

 fact of the brown hare of the low ground inter- 

 breeding with the blue mountain hare, and producing 

 fertile offspring. I do not know why this should not 

 often take place. The blue hares keep to the tops of 

 our moors all through the summer, it is true. In 

 snowy weather they often descend to the low grounds, 

 and it sometimes happens that a stray individual 

 chooses to pass the following summer on the land to 

 which she migrated in late autumn. 



An intelligent keeper in the service of Macleod of 

 Macleod assures me that hares which he believes to 

 be hybrids have been killed repeatedly on the shooting 

 in his charge, and reports of others have reached me 

 from different quarters. The blue hare is now com- 

 mon, even in the lowlands of Scotland. Of course 

 the chance of her hybridising with her brown or red 

 neighbour becomes more considerable as her breeding 

 range extends. 



Professor Fatio states that the brown hares which 

 live among the Alps often come into contact with the 

 blue hares of higher altitudes, and apparently the two 

 species interbreed. The hybrids resemble both their 



