t82 The Poets Beasts. 



conies, and, by their suggestions of their feebleness, imply 

 the error of identifying them with the conies of Holy Writ, 

 though the latter are really, in spite of their rabbit size, 

 the connecting links between the enormous hippopotamus 

 and rhinoceros, and not much more nearly related to 

 Bunny than they are to " Welsh rabbits." 



It is unfortunate for the rabbit, poor " Wabasso," in one 

 way, that it should be such excellent eating, for if they 

 shared the hedgehog's immunity from the pie-dish, their 

 pleasant republics might never know the recurring massacre. 

 I confess that much as I delight in watching warren-life, 

 and, indebted as I am to the grotesqueness of rabbits at play 

 or at work for many a hearty laugh, I remember them 

 very tenderly in a pie — a cold pie. 



I never feel guilty when I shoot rabbits. There is an 

 idea somewhere about me that they multiply under destruc- 

 tion. They are like peppermint plants. If you go and root 

 out the bed in the corner of the garden, the plant breaks out 

 all over the path. It is like fighting with original sin, as 

 Dudley Warner says. So I pepper away in a warren with a 

 light heart. After all, if you smash up a comet it splinters 

 into stars. 



Rabbits, they say, taught men sapping and mining, — in 

 " Rasselas," at any rate, the Prince and his companion take 

 the hint of tunnelling a way of escape out of the Happy 

 Valley from these small rodents — and their burrows are cer- 

 tainly sometimes models of ingenious complication, strong- 

 holds though without strength, impregnable though without 

 armament. If the poets had wanted an analogous instance 

 of maternal sacrifice to take the place of the wretched old 

 pelican, they might have remembered the rabbit, which 

 lines her nursery with fur pulled off her own body. 



Hares go with rabbits by a process of unconscious cere- 

 bration. Laprel and Kayward are sympathetic. Each in 

 turn plays the other's shadow. Rabbits, however, are much 



