THE RABBIT OR CONY 211 



July, and nine once only, viz., on 29th March 1901. They are 

 born blind and deaf, and nearly naked, and are thus unlike 

 leverets, which are covered with fur and have the eyes open at 

 birth. The ears are said not to gain the power of motion until 

 the tenth day ; on the twelfth they are completely open, and on 

 the thirteenth they may be erected. Sight begins on the 

 eleventh,^ and shortly afterwards the young leave the nest 

 for short periods preparatory to their final exit. They 

 probably eat grass as soon as they can run, and are 

 independent of their mother by the third or fourth week. 



Messrs C. S. Minot and E. Taylor ^ have studied the rate of 

 growth of young rabbits both before and after birth, and find 

 that from the ninth to the fifteenth day the embryo adds 

 704 per cent, to its weight daily. Afterwards the average 

 daily addition drops enormously, being only 212 per cent, from 

 the fifteenth to the twentieth day. The figures suggest that 

 in younger embryos the rate of increase may be very much 

 greater, amounting to possibly over 1000 per cent, per day 

 before the ninth day. Four days after birth a young male 

 rabbit is capable of adding over 17 per cent, to its weight 

 in a single day. The percentage increment then drops rapidly, 

 until at the age of twenty-three days the addition is only 

 a little over 6 per cent, each day. After about the fifty-fifth 

 day the decline in the growth rate becomes more gradual. 



The doe pairs again within a few hours after the birth of 

 her young, and if no conception results, pairing takes place again 

 at intervals varying from ten to twenty-one days, until either 

 pregnancy ensues or the sexual season terminates.^ She 

 is frequently found to be pregnant whilst suckling a previous 

 litter. Superfoetation is said to occur, but must be very 

 rare indeed, since Mr Jones, although he has paunched 

 thousands, has never noticed a case of it, and other game- 



' Fide Harting, op. cit. supra, 8, footnote, apparently from W. B. Daniel, Rural 

 Sports, 1801, i., 495 ; Daniel, however, got the fact from Cartwright, who wrote of 

 domestic rabbits in his Journal on the Coast of Labrador, 1792, but, the latter work 

 being without an index, I have been unable to find the original passage. 



^ "The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death," Popular Science Monthly, Ixxi., 

 •907; reprinted London, 1908; see also Normentafeln zur Entwicklungsgeschichte 

 der Wirbelthiere (Jena) ; No. 5, 1905. 



^ W. Heape, Quart. Joum. Microscop. Sci., 1900. See F. H. A. Marshall, The 

 Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, 41. 



