THE IRISH HARE 329 



104). The High Gosforth Park Coursing Club, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 imported the following live hares, mostly from the Wicklow mountains : 

 —In 1886,262; 1887, 193; 1888, 199; 1889, 342 (E. Britten, secretary ; 

 see also below, p. 339). In Islay some were turned down previously to 

 1818 (Thompson). In Mull there is a colony emanating from twelve 

 hares sent from Wicklow about i860 (Notman, Field, loth January 

 1903, 53); here Irish and Scottish Hares may be seen together and 

 keep their specific characters, the Irish retaining their reddish pelage, 

 greater weight, and turning white in winter less readily than the 

 Scottish Hares ; they also exhibit a tendency to the familiar buff variety, 

 which I named lutescens in 1900 (see below, p. 334; also, Barrett- 

 Hamilton, Irish Naturalist, 1898, 75). 



A well-known introduction is that of the late G. W. D. Assheton 

 Smith at Vaynol Park, Bangor, North Wales, which L. V. Lort thinks 

 took place about 1881 ; new blood was added in the shape of thirteen 

 bucks and eleven does from Caledon estate, Co. Tyrone, on 27th 

 January 1899 (Lort per Forrest). A specimen from Vaynol in the 

 British Museum is partly of the usual reddish colour, having changed 

 three parts white. All three British hares are, or were, found in or round 

 Vaynol Park, but Lort reports that the Irish are now nearly extinct. 



There must have been many other introductions ; e.g. in Yorkshire 

 (see below, p. 340). An Irish Hare is said to have been shot at 

 Barnstaple, Devon, on ist January 1902 (Tegetmeier, Field, i8th 

 January 1902, 73). 



Distribution in time : — Numerous remains of hares were found in 

 the Shandon (Brennan, Carte, Leith Adams) and Ballinamintra caves, 

 Co. Waterford (Leith Adams); in all the strata of the Coffey and 

 ■Plunkett caves, Co. Sligo (Scharff, Trans. Roy. Irish Acad., xxxii., 

 1903, B, iv., 199); in the Catacombs, Alice and Gwendoline, Newhall 

 and Barntick caves, Co. Clare (Scharff, Trans, cit., xxxiii., 1906, B, i., 

 37-38). Although not all of pleistocene age, many of the remains are 

 undeniably ancient and contemporaneous with those of mammoth, 

 reindeer, gigantic Irish deer, common and banded lemmings, arctic fox, 

 spotted hyaena, bear, and probably of other animals, in a fauna of late 

 pleistocene age corresponding with that illustrated by Ightham fissures, 

 Kent. They have long been recognised as too large for L. europceus, 

 and have therefore been referred to L. hibernicus (as by Leith Adams, 

 Trans, cit., xxvi. (sci.), 1879, 211). Femora from the Sligo caves 

 measure 125 and 130 mm. and a tibia 145 mm. in length; femora 

 from Newhall and Barntick, Co. Clare, vary between 1 1 7 and 

 131 mm., tibiae between 129 and 149-5 nim., which dimensions agree 

 fairly well with those of modern specimens of L. hibernicus} 



^ The literature of the older caves is so extensive that it is impossible to give more 

 detailed references. 



VOL. 11. Y 



