THE RABBIT. 243 



the same. One has every respect for the hare, but 

 neither the character nor the mentality of the brown 

 rabbit is calculated to excite our admiration. It 

 will return and nest time and again in the hollows 

 of a swamp that is periodically flooded, and where 

 death by drowning inevitably awaits its young ; it 

 has no morals to speak of, and no pluck whatever. 

 True that it figures as an important item on the 

 nation's bill of fare ; but even here the rabbit does 

 not pay its way, and only because it is to the poor 

 man what the pheasant is to his employer is the 

 existence of the creature justified. 



HARDINESS. 



Rabbits are not supposed to be particularly 

 hardy animals, as they are said to be susceptible 

 to damp, yet they seem capable of surviving under 

 any conditions whatever. In the heights of the 

 Scottish hills, where they live for seven months 

 of the year amidst the driving wet of the cloud- 

 wraiths, they flourish exceedingly. On every 

 wind-swept island bordering the coast, though 

 some are so bleak and rugged that practically 

 nothing grows in the shallow soil, the rabbits 

 fatten and multiply till periodical disease wipes 

 them out. Among coast cliffs they are entirely 

 at home. Here, on a dizzy shelf, the young are 

 born ; they grow up to share their burrows with 

 the puffin and the shearwater ; they become a 

 crag-fast race of their own, thriving and multi- 

 plying till some, perforce, wander inland. 



Amidst such surroundings the rabbit is, at any 

 rate, secure from man. The peregrine, the buzzard, 

 the weasel, and in some cases the eagle are its 

 only foes ; but so fleet and sure-footed does the 

 cragland cony become in negotiating the perilous 



