194 
NATURE NOTES. 
arrangement of the four marks when going fast or merely lobbing along in an 
undecided way — for it is not everyone who has studied tracks in the snow. With 
regard to the statement that hares and rabbits do not thrive very well together, we 
think this requires qualifying (though we agree with the author that the former 
will not graze on land defiled by the latter), for we can call to mind a certain 
estate on which hares, preserved for coursing, were very numerous, which also 
supported a large head of rabbits. As to disease in hares, we recollect that in 
1880, after the disastrous wet summer of 1879, many hares were found dead at 
the time the sheep were dying of liver fluke, and it was said that the hares died 
from the same cause. People who buy “ Scotch hares ” in the game-shops 
might wish for fuller particulars of this species, the Lepiis variabilis of Pallas. 
Nothing can exceed the soft silkiness of the fur assumed in winter by the moun- 
tain or blue hare north of the Arctic circle, and the widely-separated toes, fringed 
with long, stiff hairs, are a beautiful provision of nature to enable it to traverse 
the snow with ease and comfort. The footmarks made by a northern hare when 
crossing a snow-field are more than double the size of the prints made by the 
brown hare. 
Mr. Macpherson’s views upon poachers as a criminal class, the result of much 
experience (“ I handle,” he writes, “so to speak, hundreds of poachers”), are 
naturally sound and to the point ; but we fear it would be very difficult to make 
poaching unprofitable until we are all fit to live in Utopia. There is a great deal 
of interesting poaching information in the fourth chapter. Local customs or 
fashions in poaching doubtless vary ; we have never personally met with a snare 
(though we see more than we want to see) composed of as many as six or seven 
strands of wire, a double twist generally contenting the thieves of our own dis- 
trict. We wish Mr. Macpherson could have told us .something about a “hare 
pipe.” William Lawson, in A New Orchard and Garden (1656), when enumer- 
ating the “natural things externally hurting orchards,” the hare among them, and 
the means of prevention, writes that you must have “ an hare-pipe for an hare.” 
The shooting chapters open with some sound and sensible remarks upon the 
Ground Game Act, which we hope will be widely read. And we may say the 
same of the warning to youthful sportsmen — not to fire a long shot at a hare g 
going straight away. If the members of the so-called “ Humanitarian League ” 
would sometimes read a book on sporting, and try to know a little about what 
they talk of so glibly, they would find that sportsmen are not all uselessly cruel. 
The second chapter of this division contains some more about poaching, with good 
practical hints for circumventing the same, and an account of taking hares by 
hawking with the long-winged gerfalcon and the short-winged goshawk ; but it is 
hardly correct to speak of “ the Bonelli eagle ! ” There is also a very pretty and 
well-written description of the preliminaries of a blue hare drive, which gives us 
some insight into the habits of this species. From the chapters on public and 
private coursing (forming a valuable handbook for votaries of that sport) the 
naturalist may cull some .scraps, notably as to the pace of the hare, which, in 
favourable weather, “ can set the best greyhounds at defiance and run them to a 
standstill.” I think no one can realise the pace at which a hare goes until he sees 
it race away from greyhounds on the level. There is a bright and pleasantly- I 
written chapter on beagling, with 15-inch beagles, which, in the opinion of the 1 
author, “ presents sport in its truest elements.” “The sport of hunting a hare i 
with a pack of hounds,” writes Mr. Gibbons, “ is so old that, in comparison with 
it, fox-hunting is but a plant of mushroom growth.” Though the old ways, when | 
one could enjoy a nearly eight hours slow chase with “Sir Roger de Coverlcy’s 
harriers,” arc passed away, there is still room for the exercise of the powers of 1 
observation when hare-hunting, and the chapter on the pursuit of the hare con- j 
tains some instructive remarks about habits, favourite lying grounds, and the shifts 
and stratagems adopted to baflle its pursuers by an animal which “ spends her 
life in Iteing hunted.” A hare out of her own country has become almost pro- 
verlfial, and we read here that a hunted hare makes her usual rings, and keeps to 
her own ground until, from .some unexplained cause, she loses herself, when she 
“ will make off endways.” The chapter on the harrier naturally deals with the 
hound rather than the hare. Excellent as the e.ssays on cookery in all the volumes ^ 
of the series have been, it will not be uncomplimentary to their authors to say 
that the thirty-five pages devoted to the cookery of the hare is, perhaps, the best 
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