148 THE HARE, 
It is a wonderfully cunning animal, and is said by many who have closely 
studied its habits to surpass the fox in ready ingenuity. Appearing to under- 
stand the method by which the hounds are enabled to track its footsteps, it 
employs the most crafty manceuvres for the purpose of throwing them off the 
scent. Sometimes it will run forward for a considerable distance, and then, 
after returning for a few hundred yards on the same track, will make a great 
leap at right angles to its former course, and lie quietly hidden while the 
hounds run past its spot of concealment. It then jumps back to its track, 
and steals quietly out of sight in one direction, while the hounds are going in 
the other. 
The Hare does not live in burrows, like the rabbit, but only makes a slight 
depression in the ground, in which she lies so flatly pressed to the earth that 
sy 
HARE. —(Lefus timidus.) 
she can hardly be distinguished from the soil and dried herbage among which 
she has taken up her temporary abode. 
It is a tolerably prolific animal, beginning to breed when only a year old, 
and producing four or five young at a litter. The young Hares, or “leverets,” 
as they are technically termed, are born with their eyes open, and covered 
with hair. For the space of four or five weeks they remain under the care of 
their mother, but after that time they separate, and depend upon themselves 
for subsistence. ‘ ‘ 
RESEMBLING the hare in general appearance and in many of its habits, 
the Rapsit is readily distinguished from that animal by its smaller dimen- 
sions, its different colour, its shorter and uniformly brown ears, and its 
shorter limbs. 
The Rabbit is one of the most familiar of British quadrupeds, having taken 
firm possession of the soil into which it has been imported, and multiplied to 
so great an extent that its numbers can hardly be kept within proper bounds 
without annual and wholesale massacres. As it is more tameable than the 
hare, it has long been ranked amongst the chief of domestic pets, and has been 
so modified by careful management that it has developed itself into many 
