LEPUS 



239 



So long as rabbits are commonly kept in captivity for 

 purposes of pleasure or profit, reports of their successful hybrid- 

 isation with hares will probably continue to be advanced by those 

 who have not sufficiently considered the difficulties of the sub- 

 ject. Zoologists will continue to accept such statements with 

 caution ; ^ and field naturalists are unanimous that the animals 

 are naturally antipathetic, and will not even thrive well together 

 on the same ground. This may be, as Woodruffe-Peacocke 

 suggests {The Cultivation of the Common Hare, 1905, 11), 

 because rabbits, when in numbers, bully, chase,^ and worry 

 hares to death, or, perhaps, because the rabbits eat or taint the 

 food of the more delicately feeding hares, or because the former 

 infect the latter with epidemics to which they are themselves 

 immune. A particularly vicious attack by a rabbit was de- 

 scribed by E. T. Booth {Field, 6th Oct. 1883, 490) ; the hare was 

 bitten on the hind quarters and gave vent to repeated screams. 



The literature of this subject runs through many languages, 

 and is very voluminous. But, since it proves nothing, it 

 may safely be neglected. Its character may be sufficiently 

 indicated by the following sentence, selected from Simpson 

 {The Wild Rabbit, 1908, 82), an otherwise sane writer, to 

 whose work, as stated above on p. 202, indebtedness has been 

 gladly acknowledged :■ — " The Belgian hare is a hybrid between 

 the hare and the rabbit, and as such has been a puzzle to 

 naturalists, because it is almost the only hybrid that is fertile 

 and can perpetuate its kind." 



Hares have been the subject of so many superstitions in so 

 many lands, that it would be impossible to mention more than 

 a few of the more striking. 



There was a hare-god in Egypt from very early times, 

 dating, with the frog-god, from about B.C. 4000. Although so 

 old, it is rare, but has been figured by Wallis Budge {Papyrus 

 of Ani, pis. 12 and 35 ; see also Lanzone, Mittologia, pi. 52). 



As with the Mole, an anatomical misinterpretation doubtless 



' For a long account of Roux's experiments, see Holdsworth, Zoologist, 1862, 

 7923 and 7983. The question was well discussed by Saint Loup, Rev. Set. Nat. 

 appliquies, Paris, Nos. i and 2, 1-15, and 49-59, Sth and 20th January 1893. 



^ Cf. "When they {i.e. the hares) be in their heat of love and pass any place where 

 conies be, the most part of them will follow after her as the hounds follow after a 

 bitch or a brache" {The Master of Game, ed. 1909, 22). 



