NOTES AND QUEEIHS. 75 



detrimental to the Hares that either they would have been exterminated 

 by their natural enemies, or that natural selection, through the instrument- 

 ality of their enemies, would have caused them to adopt the more protective 

 summer dress much earlier. But it must be taken into consideration that 

 these Grouse-moors are most strictly preserved, and that all the large pre- 

 daceous birds and carnivorous animals are destroyed whenever they appear. 

 Foxes are trapped in large numbers, and there are hardly any large Hawks. 

 Thus the action of natural selection in regard to colouration is practically an- 

 nulled, and there is nothing to influence any change. This is a clear case 

 of what Mr. Marshall speaks about on p. 542, an "observation of the de- 

 meanour of protectively coloured animals, which find themselves, by natural 

 accident or necessity, in an environment to which their colour is quite 

 unsuited"; and the animals have not altered their habits, but adopted 

 "their Usual attitudes of concealment," and it appears to be an unmis- 

 takable example of " unreasoning instinct." 



It was interesting to note how the Hares escaped when we got so dose 

 that they came to the conclusion that they were observed. Out of nine that 

 we bolted, two ran into crevices in the rocks, two ran along the side of the 

 hill, and five went straight uphill at a great pace. The visibility of the 

 Hares may be uuderstood from a remark in a letter from the late Col. 

 Crompton Lees. He tells us that on his moors at Greenfield, Yorkshire, 

 in March, 1893, his keeper from one spot on the hills counted over fifty 

 Hares within range of his field-glass at one time.— =T. A. Coward (Bowdon, 

 Cheshire). . 



