226 LEPORID.E— ORYCTOLAGUS 



evening, and night,^ and in the morning rest within the shelter 

 of the burrows, play, or bask in the sun.^ In feeding, they 

 at first advance slowly and cautiously from the burrow to the 

 edge of the covert ; then, if they have a distance to travel, they 

 break into a rush at the end. Passing over the same ground day 

 after day, they consume the vegetation near them in succession, 

 clearing a space around their burrows and sometimes cropping 

 one side of a field bare, while, perhaps, the remainder of it is 

 untouched. Their depredations on grass or growing corn 

 are thus, unlike those of hares, confined in normal conditions 

 to definite areas. When food is scarce, as when snow lies on 

 the ground, or on poor pastures, they keep on the feed more 

 continuously, and will wander a long way to a turnip field, or to 

 bark trees in a plantation. In the spring, too, the sexual 

 season causes many of them to seek new ground, and the places 

 of those killed off in pleasure-grounds or other forbidden fields 

 are soon filled by newcomers. Occasionally their routine is 

 upset even where food is plentiful, for they are believed to 

 graze voraciously before a storm in summer, and when the 

 grass is wet are not observed so much abroad. 



The tastes of rabbits and hares in trees have been some- 

 what extensively treated by Messrs Simpson and Harting 

 in their respective works, as well as by Mr Abbey,' who 

 points out that, unlike hares, which always nibble, gnaw, and 

 peel above the snow line, rabbits take up their abode in the 

 "caves" formed by snow overlying evergreens, where they 

 feed on the stems. Miss Haviland has rightly drawn my 

 attention to the fact that in the south-east of Ireland, 

 where the winters are rarely severe, rabbits nevertheless bark 

 trees, and she suggests that the astringent bark of ash, 

 blackthorn, laurel, and ivy are valuable as counteracting the 

 action of the sodden half-decayed grass on which they are 

 driven to exist for so many months of the year. She believes 

 that the roots of the wild iris or yellow flag are eaten for the 

 same purpose. Miss Haviland* has observed that in some 



more than one species of " mouse " in Britain, and many burrowers living on open 

 plains, as ground squirrels, prairie dogs, golden "meerkats " {Cynictis), and others. 



' But they may be changed from nocturnal into diurnal feeders by a regular 

 course of disturbance at night — see Jones, A Gamekeeper's Notebook, 2ig. 



^ Simpson, op. ctl., 68-73. ' Op. cit., 101-102. ■* Op. cit, 117. 



