MAMMALIA 85 



Court, and she being followed into the court by my sons Michael 

 and James, they and some other of their brothers did take her 

 in Rydal Hall Court.' 1 That Hare-hunting enjoyed popularity 

 in Cumberland a century ago is certain. ' But a Cumber- 

 land hunt,' says a local writer, ' there undoubtedly was during 

 the last century, and a relic of it is now before me in the 

 shape of its button, a large flat button of plated silver, on which 

 is engraved the figure of a Hare at full speed, and over, the 

 words ' The Cumberland Hunt.' 2 



E A B B I T. 



Lepus cuniculus, L. 



The coast-line of the north-west of England is singularly well 

 suited to the habits of this animal; indeed, our Cumbrian 

 warrens have been famous for many centuries. The Furness 

 monks preserved a fine warren. That belonging to the Abbot of 

 Holme Cultram was valued, together with some fishing rights, 

 at the annual rate of £2, 6s. 8d. ; — ' warenn' cuniculorum,' it is 

 termed, in a roll of 30 Henry viii. The author of a ' Letter 

 giving an account of a Survey of the N. West Coast of England 

 in August 1746/ informs his readers that i the Grune is a re- 

 markable head of land, whose position the common maps have 

 widely mistaken. It is now only a rabbet warren, and hardly 

 any vestige left where an antient chapel stood, called the chapel 

 of the Grune. . . . Hence [from Dubmill] we have a low coast 

 till you pass the Blue-dial ; then the shore begins to be bankey, 

 and rises by degrees to the Bankend point, with a skirt of low 

 ground under the banks for rabbet warrens. The sea-sand is 

 full of stones, some pretty large. The coast all along from 

 Skinbum-naze is entangled with sea-holly, and very few other 

 herbs, save the serpyllum and rest-harrow. When we get to a 

 single house called the Boin, the coast elbows round, and the 

 whole track from thence to Derwent mouth is a low benty soil, 

 so broken with rabbets that 'tis almost impossible to ride it after 

 night falls.' 3 Dr. Heysham in 1796 alluded to the importance 



1 Rydal ms. p. 404. 2 The Cumberland Foxhounds, p. 6. 



3 Gentleman's Magazine, 1748, pp. 1-5, 291, 292. 



