THE BROWN HARE. 199 



mating purposes. Were these glands less developed, 

 the animals would never find each other where 

 mating is most necessary for the survival of the 

 species that is, where hares are few and far 

 between. I have never heard of hares uniting in 

 any way purely for social amusement, though such 

 a thing does not seem to be unknown among 

 certain northern varieties. 



NATURAL AND ACQUIRED ENEMIES. 



A wild animal has two kinds of foes hereditary, 

 and those which are brought about by a change 

 in the conditions under which it lives. The former 

 it contends with guided by inherent knowledge, 

 which is instinct ; the latter it learns to circumvent 

 only by experience. The hereditary foes of the wild 

 hare are the fox, the weasel, the hound, even man 

 himself. Against each of these the hare has its means 

 of defence. A young hare that has lived its life 

 in perfect immunity instinctively dodges through 

 a narrow opening to baffle a pursuing hound, and 

 as instinctively doubles back and leaps aside when 

 going to its form in order to delay a pursuing 

 stoat. All these tricks, clever in their way, are 

 the outcome of endless decades of experience ; 

 they are, indeed, inherited habit. A young hare 

 obtains little or no education from its mother. 

 The fox-cub or the otter-kit is taught by its parents, 

 lesson by lesson, the things on which its later life 

 depends ; but this does not apply in the case of 

 the hare. The leverets leave the dam when about 

 a fortnight old, and each day thereafter they 

 become less and less dependent upon her. Her 

 duty in life is merely to suckle them ; and as they 

 become independent of her for support, the family 

 bond is split asunder, and leveret and mother live 



