COMMON HARE. 335 



hill than down — in fact, in descending a steep bank, it is 

 obliged to run diagonally to avoid over-balancing itself. 



The Hare is as exclusively a vegetable feeder as perhaps 

 any known mammal. The structure of the teeth has been 

 already alluded to, and that of the whole of the digestive 

 organs is not less adapted to such a diet. Its food con- 

 sists of various kinds of herbage, and it becomes at times 

 a very annoying and destructive invader, not only of the 

 field and garden, but also of young plantations, gnawing 

 off the bark and thus destroying great numbers of young 

 trees. It also does great damage in fields of young wheat 

 and other grain, and it is especially fond of aromatic 

 herbs, such as thyme, parsley, &c. Mr. S. Mawson has 

 recorded in the " Zoologist " for 1867, that the stomach 

 of a Hare killed in winter contained a quantity of haw- 

 thorn-berries. 



This animal pairs when a year old, or even sooner, and the 

 female, after thirty days' gestation, brings forth from two 

 to five young ones, which are born covered with hair and 

 with the ej'es open. There are several broods in the year ; 

 in mild winters young Hares have been found in January, 

 and we have known breeding to continue till the middle 

 of November, so that the Hare may almost be said to 

 propagate its species all the year round. The "leverets," 

 as the young are called, are suckled for about a month, 

 after which they leave their mother and seek their own 

 subsistence. The long-mooted question of the possibility 

 of superfoetation has been supposed by some to be decided 

 in the afiirmative by circumstances which have for ages 

 been known to take place in this animal. Pliny distinctly 

 states that the Hare and the Rabbit are the only animals 

 in which it does occur.* Sir Thomas Brown devoted a 



* " Lepiis omnium praede nascens, solus prceter dasypoden superftetat, aliud 

 eclucans, aliud in utero pilis vestitum, aliud implume, aliud inchoatum gerens 

 paiiter. ' — Biat. Nat., lib, viii. cap. It. 



