The Leporide. 
265 
experiment is not as novel or as interesting as the other ; since, 
without connecting our practice with this new theory, good 
farmers have not overlooked the use of the roll, so far as leisure 
and a happy moment could be found. 
It will, however, be useful to have the effects of repeated rollings 
separately investigated and carefully recorded. 
, 6. — The Lcporidc. 
Both the farmer, who is more and more conversant with cross- 
breeding, and the naturalist, who cannot stand apart from the 
existing controversies on " species," are interested in the practical 
development given in France of late to a race of hybrids between 
the hare and the rabbit, which bears the name of " Leporide." 
This half-bred has been reared during the last seventeen years 
under the management of M. Roux, President or Vice President 
of the Agricultural Society of Charente, who appears to be an 
intelligent but unscientific and unobtrusive landed proprietor. 
Its fame has been spread abroad by M. P. Broca, a French 
naturalist, in a treatise on Hybridising, published in 1859,* who 
twice visited and inspected M. Roux's establishment, and carefully 
weighed his explanations. 
It appears that among the recognised hybrid animals are found 
(in addition to the mule) the offspring of the he-goat and the 
ewe ; of the setter-dog and the bitch-wblf (of which breed four 
generations were reared by Buffon) ; of the camel and drome- 
dary ; Buffon's crosses between the ox, bison, and zebra ; and 
those also obtained by John Hunter from dogs, jackals, and 
wolves. 
Moreover instances have been already recognised of a hybrid 
birth from the hare and rabbit : between 1773 and 1780 the 
Abbe Gagliari, near Oneglia, bred from the buck-rabbit and the 
doe-liare, and Amorretti recorded the results in 1780. In 1831 
the London Zoological Society received a communication relating . 
to the chance birth of a hybrid from the buck-hare and doe- 
rabbit. 
In this case a leveret had been reared with two young rabbits, 
buck and doe. The doe bore a litter of six young ones, of which 
three were common rabbits and the other three resembled the 
hare. One of the latter alone survived, and some years after was 
dissected by Professor R. Owen, whose examination settled the 
previously existing doubts as to the hare having been its 'sire. 
Its intestines, it is said, corresponded neither with those of the 
rabbit nor the hare ; the great bowel differed but little from that 
of the rabbit, the smaller one was that of the hare. The skin 
* ' Kecherches sur l'Hybridite Animate en general. 
