244 UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 
The Rabbit has long played a minor part in the civilization 
of various peoples, regarding which Darwin gives the following 
information (in Anzmals and Plants under Domestication) :— 
“The tame rabbit has been domesticated from an ancient period. 
Confucius ranges rabbits among animals worthy to be sacrificed 
to the gods, and, as he prescribes their multiplication, they were 
probably at this early period domesticated in China. They are 
mentioned by several of the classical writers. In 1631 Gervaise 
Markham writes: ‘ You shall not, as in other cattell, looke to 
their shape, but to their richnesse, onely elect your buckes, the 
largest and goodliest conies you can get; and for the richnesse 
of the skin, that is accounted the richest which has the equallest 
mixture of blacke and white hair 
together, yet the blacke rather 
shadowing the white; the furre 
should be thicke, deepe, smooth, 
and shining; . . . they are of 
body much fatter and larger, 
and, when another skin is worth 
Z : two or three pence, they are 
ee ear worth two shillings’. From this 
full description we see that silver- 
gray rabbits existed in England at this period; and, what is far 
more important, we see that the breeding or selection of rabbits 
was then carefully attended to.” 
Although the Hare cannot now be called a domesticated 
animal, it was so in ancient Rome, as it happened to be one of 
the numerous animals relished by the epicure, its shoulder in 
particular being esteemed a dainty. The animals were kept 
in a hare-preserve or leporarium, which was a large enclosed 
park. They were sufficiently tame to come and be fed in winter, 
a horn being blown as a signal to them. At first, it would seem, 
intended for hares only, the leporaria were at a later date tenanted 
by rabbits as well, these having been introduced from Spain. 
Tue Fat Dormovse or Loir (Myoxvs ets, fig. 1178).—This 
was another animal that appealed to the palate of the Roman 
epicure. Houghton gives the following account of the way in 
which it was treated (in Natural History of the Ancients) :-— 
“ Dormice (g/ves) were very highly esteemed as food by the old 
Romans. Small yards were walled around, in which were planted 
