THE ZOOLOGIST 



No. 215.— November, 1894. 



NOTES on the RABBIT, HISTORICAL and GEOGRAPHICAL. 



By Pkofessok Herbert A. Strong, M.A., LL.D. 



The oldest notices which we possess of the Rabbit, Lepus 

 cuniculus, point to Spain as the country of its origin. The 

 earliest reference to this animal in literature is to be found in 

 Polybius (circa B.C. 204), who tells us that there were no Hares in 

 Corsica, but that there were other animals (hvvih'koi) resembling 

 Hares, which burrowed in the ground, and in addition there were 

 Foxes and Wild Sheep (Moufflons). iElian, who lived in the 

 third century of the Christian era, tells us that he is no philo- 

 logist, but that he has heard that the word is a Celto-Iberian — 

 i. e. Basque- word; the Romans adopted the name with the animal, 

 and called it cuniculus, which seems to have been a popular 

 etymology from cuneus, a wedge, owing to the ease and rapidity 

 with which these rodents made their way into the ground. Some 

 of the ancient writers, like Varro and Pliny, thought that the 

 Rabbit derived its name cuniculus from the military mines whereby 

 towns were approached for attack ; while other authorities, with 

 more probability, inferred that the mine was called after the 

 animal.* Of course the old English word " coney," which also 

 appears as "conyng," and the old French words connil and connin, 

 are derived from the same source, and the Romance words, like 

 the Italian coniglio, all come from the original cuniculus. The 

 question then arises whence came the word *o'w*Ao?, which iElian 

 says he had heard was taken from the language of the Western 



* Martial says Rabbits first taught men how to undermine towns, Ep. xiii, 

 60.— Ed. 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XVIII. NOV. 1894. 2 I 



