202 LEPORID^— ORYCTOLAGUS 



respects cannot be considered better known than those of rarer 

 and less familiar species.^ 



As compared with a hare, it is a generalised animal, a 

 digger and yet a runner. But although it digs, and digs well,^ 

 its skill in this respect has not been accompanied by the serious 

 loss of locomotive powers which specially fossorial limbs impose 

 upon their possessors. 



It is, however, unfitted by its organisation for that long 

 continued and rapid course by which the hares are distinguished. 

 Instead, it seeks safety and shelter in deep holes of its own con- 

 struction, and in places where the work of excavation is easy 

 it associates in large societies. A big burrow is a very 

 complicated excavation, which may descend to a depth of 

 several feet, and does not seem to be built on any specified plan. 

 In fact, its ramifications ® are the result of the promiscuous 

 activity of many generations of inhabitants, each member of 

 which has from time to time taken a turn in an unorganised 

 way at improving it. Certain features are, however, common 

 to all burrows. The main entrance or entrances are constructed 

 from the outside, and may be easily recognised by the bare 

 spaces at their mouths, which are formed by the excavated 

 soil. This is kept free of vegetation by the passing and 

 repassing over it of the inmates, which also sit on it, and leave 

 there a portion of their droppings. Sometimes also a bone or 

 two of defunct rabbits, or the remains of the old bedding used 

 in a nursery, are recognisable. The inhabitants do not allow 

 large heaps to accumulate in front of or around their burrows, 

 but work the soil away from the entrances, so that it forms 

 long, narrow, rather furrow-like mounds of shallow height ; 

 and, if the burrow opens on the side of a hill, the soil is 

 always thrown downwards in the easiest direction. A feature 



' Indebtedness is gladly acknowledged in preparing this article to two works on 

 the Rabbit, by J. E. Harting and J. Simpson, the titles of which are mentioned above 

 on pages 178 and 191. 



2 " It can soon drive a tunnel into the hardest loam or dry clay ; and I have 

 known it burrow deeply in a surface seam of coal, and scatter the lumps yards away 

 from the entrance." — Simpson, op. cit., 16. 



^ Few plans of burrows seem to have been published, but there is one in 

 P. Anderson Graham's Country Pastimes for Boys., 1908, 300, fig. 171 ; another in 

 Miss M. D. Haviland's Lives of the Fur Folk., 1910, 89 ; and some simple ones in 

 Owen Jones and Marcus Woodward's Woodcraft, 1910, 89 and 92. 



