as known to the Ancients. 181 



as occurring abundantly in Spain, the great home of L&pus 

 cuniculus, though it is not certain whether this geographer 

 was himself ever in Spain. The following is his description : — 

 " Of destructive animals there are scarcely any, with the ex- 

 ception of certain little hares, which burrow in the ground 

 (itXtiv tcov yecopu^oov XajiSewv), and are called by some lebe- 

 rides. These creatures destroy both seeds and plants, by 

 gnawing at the roots. They are met with throughout almost 

 the whole of Spain, extending to Marseilles, and infesting the 

 islands also. It is said that formerly the inhabitants of the 

 Gymnesian islands [Majorca and Minorca] sent a deputation 

 to the Romans soliciting that a new land might be given them, 

 as they were quite driven out of their country by these ani- 

 mals, being no longer able to stand against their vast multi- 

 tudes. It is possible that people might be obliged to have 

 recourse to such an expedient for help as waging war in so 

 great an extremity, which, however, but seldom happens, and 

 is a plague produced by some pestilential state of the atmo- 

 sphere, which at other times has produced serpents and rats 

 in like abundance ; but for the ordinary increase of these little 

 hares many ways of hunting have been devised, amongst 

 others by wild weasels from Africa trained for the purpose 

 (koI Stj /cat 7«Xa9 a<ypla<>, as rj Aifivr] (pepet, rpecpovcriv eV/- 

 Tr]8e<i). Having muzzled these, they turn them into the holes, 

 when they either drag out the animals they find there with 

 their claws, or compel them to fly to the surface of the earth, 

 where they are taken by people standing by for that purpose." 

 (Geograph. iii. 2. § 6.) 



iElian, who lived in the third century of the Christian era, 

 thus speaks of the rabbits of Spain : — " There is also another 

 kind of hare, which is small and never attains the size of the com- 

 mon hare ; it is known by the name of koviuXos : I retain the 

 original nomenclature adopted by the people of western Spain, 

 as I am not an inventor of names. In that country this ani- 

 mal is abundantly found : its colour is darker than that of other 

 hares ; it has a shorter tail, and differs in the size of the head, 

 which is finer and smaller and less fleshy ; its whole body, 

 too, is shorter ; but in other respects it is like an ordinary hare. 

 It is unusually excited when it unites sexually with the female. 

 Like the stag, it has a bone in its heart, the use of which let 

 others divine." (Nat. Hist. xiii. 15.) 



Athenasus (a.d. 230), after quoting the passage from Poly- 

 bius already given, says that Poseidonius the philosopher 

 makes mention of rabbits in his history, but the grammarian 

 gives no further information. Athenajus himself, however, 

 was acquainted with these animals. " We ourselves," he 



