292 LEPORID^— LEPUS 



It can stand quite perpendicular, without support, upon its hind 

 toes, and even advance some steps in that position, balancing 

 itself by holding out its fore limbs horizontally. Its leaps are 

 remarkable for their height, grace and agility. It habitually 

 overleaps its object, and comes down upon it with a curved 

 descent, as beautifully as an antelope, thus contrasting with 

 the cat, which scarce jumps up to the necessary height, while 

 the hare overleaps it. I question whether it ever runs with its 

 hind legs. ... Its ordinary habit is to walk and run with its 

 fore legs, and only to hop with its hind. 



" In its disposition it is pacific, trustful, and affectionate in 

 a most touching degree when its heart has been gained, and 

 indeed even when it has not. My hare will always lick my 

 hand in response to a caress, and by the same habit silently 

 appeal to me for protection in any apprehended danger, as the 

 presence of a stranger, or of some person whom it distrusts or 

 dislikes." 



The various methods of cooking hares' flesh would probably 

 fill a fair-sized chapter in a volume on cookery, and have no 

 direct concern with the present article.^ It would, however, be 

 hardly complete without allusion to two such celebrated dishes 

 as hare soup and jugged hare. Colonel Kenny Herbert has 

 written a delightful chapter on this at first sight unpromising 

 subject, and it may be recommended to the curious.^ 



Group LEPUS. 



An attempt was made by Lyon (see above, p. 229) to 

 separate the American varying hares sub-generically, but the 

 definition of his sub-genus poecilolagus contained no absolutely 

 diagnostic skeletal or other structural character. On the other 

 hand, the varying or snow-hares of the Old World, together 

 with L. arcticus and its allies of North America, form a natural 

 and easily recognisable group, distinct not only in structure, but 

 in origin and habits from the hares of the group Eulagos. 



History :— Snow-hares have been occasionally alluded to at 

 least from the time of Varro (b.c. 116-27), who described {De 



' See Cocks, 171. 2 The Hare, 231-262. 



