376 THE COMMON RABBIT. 



cidedly in favour of the natural hue. The coloured offspring 

 of an albino, even if matched with another coloured individual, 

 has still a tendency to produce albinoes. Of seven young 

 rabbits thus produced, two were albinoes, one black, and the 

 remainder of the usual colour. Lawrence observes, that in human 

 albinoes, the characters of the original race return, unless the 

 variety is kept up by excluding from the breed all which have 

 not the new characters. Thus, when African albinoes intermix 

 with the common race, the offspring is generally black. These 

 observations afford some explanation why marked breeds are 

 in a state of nature so rarely perpetuated. 



The rabbit, unlike the hare, is a social and digging animal. 

 Heaths, commons, and other places having a sandy soil easily 

 excavated, are the places where they associate, and form their 

 subterranean city, the warren, as it is termed. M. Varro (as 

 quoted by Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 29,) relates that a town in 

 Spain was undermined by rabbits ; and these little borough- 

 mongers do a great deal of mischief in Britain, by making 

 extensive inroads upon corn-fields and plantations. It seems, 

 however, that some of them, instead of burrowing in the earth, 

 dwell in the natural fissures of rocks. Waterton says, that towards 

 the top of the stupendous cliffs which extend from far-famed 

 Flamborough Head to the Bay of Filey, " both rabbits and foxes 

 have descended from the table-land above them, and managed 

 to find a shelter among the crevices, in places where you 

 would suppose that no four-footed animal would ever dare to 

 venture." 



When pursued by dogs, the rabbit shows great activity and 

 cunning. It will then, as Mr. Jesse says, steal from brake 

 to brake, stand on its hind legs, listening to every sound, and 

 will, when necessary, creep into a hole. This writer says, that 

 when it is pursued by weasels, the rabbit never enters its 

 burrow ; and this certainly is sagacious in the animal, for by 

 doing so it might betray its mate and her offspring. He saw 

 a rabbit chaced by two weasels, and says, " all its faculties 

 appeared to be paralysed while they were in pursuit. It bounded 



