HARES 



TO the insular Britisher there are only two sorts of hares, 

 the brown and the blue. Possibly they cross breed, but 

 naturalists are mostly opposed to this view. However, if they 

 do not cross, the writer has seen specimens in Caithness which 

 he could not assign to either race. Nowhere else in Scotland 

 does there seem to be much ground inhabited by both species. 



The blue hare is not only a creature of the moors, but of the 

 top moors. The brown hare never goes up there by any chance 

 but he often occupies moors of low level bordering the cultivation. 

 In Caithness the highest tops are usually not very high, and 

 the blue hares are often found on the moor only a few feet 

 above sea-level. Consequently there are opportunities for cross 

 breeding which in the other counties rarely exist. 



Hares are said to be very prolific, but as a matter of fact 

 they increase only very slowly : what they might do in more 

 favourable circumstances is another matter. One writer affirms 

 that when a brace was confined in a walled garden there 

 were 57 hares counted at the end of one year. That is 

 possibly correct, and yet the hare does not breed well in confine- 

 ment, which is the reason that parks are more often devoted 

 to deer and sheep than to hares, even when they are nominally 

 hare parks. The late Lord Powerscourt introduced brown hares 

 into his park in Ireland, where they did not increase ; and the 

 late Mr. Assheton-Smith, of Vaynol Park, introduced the blue 

 Alpine hare there. In Ireland the latter is indigenous, but does 

 not in winter change to white, with tips of black upon its ears, 

 as it does in Scotland and upon the Continent. 



Country Life has lately reproduced a photograph of a family 



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