336 APPENDIX. 



ages, declares himself of opinion that ' rabbits were introduced into 

 England in or just before the thirteenth century.' 



I have never found the remains of the rabbit in any surroundings 

 earlier than those of Saxon times ; but difficult as it may be to prove 

 the positive fact of the contemporaneity of a burrowing animal with a 

 deposit into which it is possible it may have burrowed, it is more 

 difficult still to prove the negative fact of its absence from an entire 

 country at any one particular period. Further, the comparatively small 

 size of the rabbit makes the matter still more difficult than it is as 

 regards the fallow deer, or the elm and vine and chestnut, which we may 

 speak of as having been probably introduced or reintroduced by the 

 Romans. And, thirdly, as a much larger portion of Britain was occu- 

 pied in earlier than in later times by woodland which would furnish 

 protection and harbour to the Mustelidae, the martens, weasel, stoat, and 

 polecat, the natural enemies and most effectual destroyers of the rabbit, 

 we can understand how this latter animal has escaped the ordinary fate 

 of ferae naturae and become more abundant in this country concomi- 

 tantly with the increase of its human occupants, and the curtailment of 

 its woods and forests \ The relations of the Mustelidae to the Rodentia 

 generally are expressed accurately in the ' Batrachomyomachia,' 51- 



52 :— 



•rikCiarov hr\ yaherjv 7repi8etSta fjris dpiaTT) 



"H /cat rpa>y\o8vvovTa Kara Tpcoykrjv eptclvei. 



The bones of water-rats, Arvicola amphibius, I have found lying in 



eyes in those days. I take this opportunity of remarking that an acquaintance with 

 the line next but one to that just quoted, 



'The dredeful roe, the buck, the hart, the hind,' 

 would have made the suggestion that the fallow deer was introduced into England no 

 earlier than the time of James I. an impossibility. For the introduction of the fallow 

 deer into Britain, see Professor Boyd Dawkins, » Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond.,' June 17, 

 1868, p. 515; 'Nature,' Dec. «io, 1874, Jan. 21, 1875; Jeitteles, ibid., Nov. 26, 

 1874; Sir V. Brooke, ibid., Jan. 14, 1875. 



1 From British coins the rabbit is as entirely absent as is the beehive ; see p. 331 

 supra. Of Spanish coins, on the other hand, Spanheim (' De Praestantia et Usu,' vol. i. 

 p. 179), in a passage pointed out to me by Mr. Evans, says it may be taken 'index 

 velut ac tessera,' much as the dolphin is of Italian seaports and the owl of Athens 

 and her colonies. Dr. Whitaker however, in his * History of Manchester,' may over- 

 strain the words of Varro (iii. 12), 'Et quod in Hispania annis ita fuisti multis ut 

 inde te cuniculos persecutos credam/ by supposing them to show that the writer held 

 that all rabbits in Italy had been imported from Spain. For a disquisition on the 

 history of the rabbit, see Houghton, 'Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,' 1869, iv. Ser., 

 vol. xv. p. 1 79. For one on that of the martens, see ' Journal of Anatomy and Phy- 

 siology,' 1868, pp. 47, 62, 437, 438 (also Article XXVIII.), where the historical 

 relations of these animals to the rabbit, and also to the Felis catus, are considered. 



