i 9 2 DAINTIES OF ANIMAL DIET 



as far as he can without overbalancing, takes it from 

 the hand. At this moment his dignity and grace some- 

 what decline, for his excitement is such that he curls 

 his tail over his back, and looks like a terrier. 



Hares, like most rodents, do not show strong pre- 

 ferences in their choice of food, the chief ' preference ' 

 being that there shall be plenty of it, and that it shall 

 be green and tender. But they will come great dis- 

 tances to feed on carrots. Some Devonshire magistrates 

 recently refused to convict a person charged with poach- 

 ing a hare, on the ground that they, as sportsmen, did 

 not believe that there was a hare in the parish in which 

 the offence was alleged to have been committed. The 

 facts rather favoured this view, but the planting of a 

 field of carrots in this hareless area soon attracted the 

 animals. Rabbits, which are by common consent able 

 to get a living where no other quadruped can, become 

 very select in their tastes where food is abundant, and 

 soon seek variety. In the gardens of a large house in 

 Suffolk, adjoining a park in which rabbits swarmed 

 before the passing of the Ground Game Act, it was 

 found that some rabbits managed to effect an entrance 

 every night, with a view to eating certain flowers. 

 These were clove -pinks and verbenas. No other 

 flowers were touched, but the pinks were nipped off 

 when they flowered, and the verbena plants devoured as 

 soon as they were bedded out. Farmers have lately 



