THE MOUNTAIN HARE 
or ten undoubted hybrids between common and mountain hares. 
Thinking at the time that such hybrids were frequent, and of no special 
zoological interest, I did not preserve one, but on finding that my 
observations were doubted, and that the British Museum contained 
no specimens of the cross, I used every effort to obtain a Scottish 
specimen, but without success. However, last autumn I saw in the 
Vienna Exhibition two of these hybrids exactly similar to the speci- 
mens I saw at Cowpark in 1895, and, thanks to the kindness of the 
Swedish Government, I have been able to obtain them. These two 
specimens bear every characteristic that such a hybrid should possess, 
both skulls and pelage being intermediate between the two species. 
In one the common hare predominates, and in the other the mountain 
hare. Both were killed in Southern Sweden in December, 1909.” 
To this communication the following editorial note was appended: 
“ More than twenty years ago attention was directed in these 
columns to the fact that the brown and mountain hares occasionally 
inter-breed, and in ‘The Field’ of August 29, 1891, in an article on 
‘ English and Scotch Hares ’ several cases were mentioned in which 
hybrids of this nature had been reported. Although a few of our readers 
expressed incredulity on the subject, evidence in support of the state- 
ment has been gradually accumulating. On December 17, 1896, at 
a meeting of the Linnean Society, a hybrid of this description was 
exhibited, which had been forwarded by Mr Assheton Smith, of Vaynol, 
Carnarvonshire, where the Scottish hare had been introduced, and 
where both species were at that time numerous. In 1897 it was stated 
in the ‘ Encyclopaedia of Sport ’ (p. 505) that Mr Millais had come 
across several such hybrids in Perthshire, and was convinced that on 
the ground to which the blue hares descend from the hills and meet 
the lowland brown hares, such inter -breeding is not so uncommon as 
is usually supposed. It was reported by Professor Lonnberg (‘Proc. 
Zool. Soc.,’ 1905, i, p. 278) that such hybrids were well known in 
South Sweden, and attention was directed to his paper on the subject 
in ‘ The Field ’ of May 6, 1905. In the autumn of the same year Mr 
J. S. Gibbons, of Whitebridge, Inverness, reported (‘The Field,’ 
September 30) that he had a few days previously shot a hare which 
appeared to him to be a cross between a brown and blue hare, and 
that in the opinion of Messrs Macleay, the experienced taxidermists of 
Inverness, to whom it was forwarded, it was undoubtedly a hybrid 
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