HARES AND RABBITS. 



47 



be smeared with any mixture which is obnoxious to ground 

 game and at the same time not injurious to the trees, — 

 a compound of tempered clay, cowdung, and soot, formed 

 into a paste with water, and brushed on the trees has been 

 found especially successful. 



Hares and rabbits are easily snared, and it is allowed by 

 law to place traps or gins in the holes and burrows of rabbits 

 — but only in their holes and not in the open field. 



Many cultivators, although they have no ground game on 

 their property, and perhaps not even an abundance of hares 

 and rabbits in the immediate vicinity, may suffer consider- 

 ably from the inroads of ground game ; for rabbits, and 

 hares especially, will go a long way for food, and will travel 

 great distances for any special crop which they delight in, 

 such as a field of carrots or parsnips. 



Rabbits and hares are, of course, kept down to a large 

 extent by the gun, and by sportsmen ; by dogs, and by 

 poachers, and by their natural foes, the fox, the stoat, and the 

 weasel. Birds of prey, such as crows, members of the hawk 

 family, and owls, are extremely partial to young rabbits and 

 leverets. When the extraordinarily productive powers of 

 hares and rabbits are taken into consideration, the former 

 producing two or three young two or three times a year, and 

 the latter from four to ten young six or seven times a year, 

 it must be acknowledged that ground game should be kept 

 constantly in check, and it will be gathered from previous 

 remarks how great an extent of loss and damage may be 

 committed where hares and rabbits are over-abundant.'''' 



* On this point Miss E. A. Ormerod contributes the following note: — " I 

 think the rabbit's prolificacy is often overestimated, I daresay that the facts are 

 very well known practical!}', and what can be made to take place in domesticity 

 very likely differs a good deal from what does actually take place in wild life. 

 I trans':ribe a quotation from Dr. J. Ritzema Bos's fine book, entitled ' The 

 Injurious and Useful among Animals : — 'Rabbits increase in a larger ratio than fowls 

 These animals copulate from winter to the end of autumn, and in that period the female 

 gives birth five or six times to her young, to the number of four to eight.' I find in the 

 second edition of Bezuick's Brit. Quads, the statement that 'the fecunditv of the rabbit is 



