HOW TO KNOW THE WILD ANIMALS 



By DOUGLAS ENGLISH, B.A., F.R.P.S. 



Author of " Wee Tim'rous Beastics," " Beasties Courageous," etc. 



THE BROWN HARE 



THE RABBIT 



With Photographs by the Author 



" Pulling her hand out of mine she ran back to where the dead Hare was lying, and flung 

 herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardlj^ have believed possible 

 in so young a child. ' Oh, my darling, my darling ! ' she moaned, over and over again. ' And 

 God meant your life to be so beautiful.' " 



The Rev. C. L. DoDGSON (Lewis Carroll) in " Sylvie and Bruno." 



" No doubt Englishmen are the sportsmen of the world, but our Continental neighbours entertain 

 a friendly rivalry with the Saxon, and the number of Hares which are annualh' killed at big drives 

 in Austria represent enormous figures, beside which statistics of our English sport are dwarfed into 

 sorry insignificance." 



The Rev. H. A. Macphersox in "The Hare." (Fit>\ Feather and Fin Series). 



HARES, Rabbits, Pikas and the 

 Romerolagus, a quaint little Mexi- 

 can beast which has been recently 

 discovered, belong to a sub-order of ro- 

 dents whose members, owing to their 

 possession of four upper incisors in place 

 of the more usual two, are called Dupli- 

 cidentata. All known Duphcidentata are 

 terrestrial, and all possess insignificant 



incisors, are extremely fine, and this fine- 

 ness of cut is sufficient to account for the 

 ease and speed with which the animals 

 bark young trees. It is possible that the 

 rodents are descended from the extinct 

 Tillodonts, whose most recent representa- 

 tive, the bearish Tillotherium, possessed, 

 like Hares and Rabbits, an additional pair 

 of small upper incisors. This suggests that 



tails — indeed, Romerolagus and the Pikas Hares and Rabbits are a primitive type, 

 have no external tails at all. It is probably familiar to most of my 



In Hares and Rabbits each front upper readers that the differences in structure, 



incisor IS deeply 

 scored down the 

 centre, and there- 

 fore presents at its 

 fined extremity 

 two separate and 

 narrow cutting 

 edges. Behind each 

 front incisor lies a 

 smaller tooth, 

 which no doubt 

 strengthens the 

 stability of the 

 tooth before it, 

 and also limits the 

 depth of its pene- 

 tration. We may 

 assume from this 

 structure that the 

 shavings, which are 

 the joint work of 

 upper and under 



[.J-..^ 



YOUNG RABBIT. 

 607 



habit, and char- 

 acter between the 

 two species date 

 from their earliest 

 infancy. The young 

 Rabbit is born in 

 a burrow, blind, 

 naked and small. 

 The young Hare is 

 born round-eyed, 

 furr\- and sizeable, 

 in the open. 



Taking the Hai-e- 

 Ralibit family as a 

 group, it is of little 

 moment whether 

 we assume that 

 Hares have aban- 

 doned burrows, or 

 that Rabbits have 

 abandoned the 

 open, or that the 



