HARES AND RABBITS I41 
was seen no more. It had taken a rabbit-run which 
led it in the nick of time to safety. 
There is a saying that any fool can hit a hare. 
But it is better not to be able to hit hares at all than 
always to hit them in their hinder parts. I knewa 
keeper who could shoot rabbits cleanly one after the 
other in any circumstances, yet he was useless at 
hares, which he seldom failed to miss altogether. 
On hares there is more preventable suffering inflicted 
by the thoughtless and the unskilled than on any 
other game—if only for this reason, it is a good 
thing that hares in many parts are extinct. Surely, 
if a man can manage to hit a partridge occasionally, 
he can remember, when shooting at a hare, that its 
head and neck represent an area equal to that of a 
partridge. If he cannot, his intellect must be so 
weak that he ought not to be allowed to shoot at all, 
unless by way of suicidal practice. Once I was 
feeling so disgusted with a shooter for persisting in 
blazing at hares out of reasonable range that when 
he said to me, ‘ Did J hit that hare?’ I asked, ‘ Why 
did you shoot 
More than one dog has been shot instead of the 
object which it was pursuing. A party of guns were 
shooting in a wood. As the underwood was thick, 
and the beaters were few and game was scarce, the 
host sent a favourite Irish terrier to enliven the pro- 
ceedings. There was a double shot. One of the 
party took an early opportunity to inform the host 
