122 HARE SHOOTING. 



common with other animals, is possessed by him in 

 a far inferior manner. His sight is less piercing, 

 his nose less penetrating, his motion less swift, than 

 that of the brute creation. He is more helpless in 

 his infancy, and less courageous in his death. The 

 very insect race beat him in geometrical precision. 

 The bee and the spider were the first, the ori- 

 ginal inventors of the octagon and arch. The 

 beaver is a better economist of space ; and many 

 birds are endowed with organs of hearing, in com- 

 parison with which man can only deem himself aristo- 

 cratically deaf. It is well, then, for the vanity of 

 the human race, that he can boast of being divinely 

 endowed with that faculty of speech, by which we can 

 take full advantage of our otherwise limited re- 

 sources ; which enables generation after generation 

 to act in progressive concert with its species, and 

 thus renders subservient to our uses, pleasures, 

 and adornments, the wonderful gifts and graces of 

 every known tribe of the animate creation. 



Among swift-footed quadrupeds, we may claim 

 precedence for the hare. The mechanism of ite 

 frame is such, that every joint and muscle tends to 

 promote the rapidity of its locomotion on the grounds 

 to which its instinct confines it. Its loins are ex- 

 tremely nervous and muscular ; and these act upon 

 the hindermost limbs, whose length and power ren- 

 der them capable of immensely rapid contraction and 

 expansion : its fore-legs are in proportion short ; thus 

 enabling the creature to form that succession of leaps, 



