288 LEPORID^— LEPUS 



The Leporides attracted the attention of Herbert Spencer 

 when elaborating a theory ^ to explain the relative degrees of fer- 

 tility in the different races of men and animals. He believed 

 that hares and rabbits illustrate the effects of different degrees of 

 activity upon fertility, the two animals being similar in their 

 diet, but unlike in their expenditure for locomotion. According 

 to Spencer's information, the relatively inert rabbit has six young 

 ones in a litter and four litters a year ; while the relatively active 

 hare has but two to five in a litter. That is not all. The rabbit 

 begins to breed when six months old, but a year elapses before 

 the hare begins to breed. These two factors compounded 

 result in a difference of fertility far greater than can be ascribed 

 to unlikeness of the two creatures in size. The value of Spencer's 

 generalisation as compelling thought is not seriously impaired 

 by reason of the errors in certain details ; but its application in 

 a wide sense to all mammals is problematical. 



Some interesting observations were carried out by the late 

 J. F. M. Dovaston, of West Fulton, Shropshire, who died in 

 1854, and whose description of the habits of the Water Shrew 

 has already been quoted.^ Unfortunately, although his experi- 

 ments were continued by his son, nothing was published on the 

 subject until Mr Forrest^ obtained an account of them from his 

 great-nephew, Mr W. D. Dovaston, of Shrewsbury. The elder 

 Dovaston kept a number* of hares in the comparative freedom 

 of a piece of grassland, enclosed with wire, near his house. 

 The animals bred freely, and the number of young born at a 

 time was found to be almost always five. Soon after 

 birth the mothers were seen to take them one by one in 

 their mouths and deposit them in separate places in the 

 paddock, subsequently visiting them each in turn to feed 

 them. Mr W. D. Dovaston is personally in a position 



Hampshire, B. V. H. Forder, Field, 19th August 1893, 322 (found by C. Coote) ; six, 

 photo of received from J. W. H. Grant, with lit. of 9th August 1906 ; seven, newly 

 born, in one form, Gloucester, J. Game, Field, 7th July 1888, 6 ; see also Daily Mail, 

 1st May 1906 (not 2,e.e.'a,fide Millais) ; eight crouching in a bunch under a heap of 

 hedge-trimmings, Owen Jones, A Gamekeeper's Notebook, 1910, 66; nine, "all of 

 equal full size," Daniel, Rural Sports, iv., 1801, 695. 



' Principles of Biology, revised ed., ii., 1899. 



2 Above, p. 137. 3 pigiii^ 6th September 1902, 452. 



* The number of does is not stated, and W. D. Dovaston was unable to 

 enlighten Forrest on this point. 



