THE MOUNTAIN HARE 
commercial value — introducing a new and valuable breed — ^but have 
excited the attention of scientific men who are now availing themselves 
of his scientific skill and experience to help them in the solution of 
minor problems. It is enough to note here that these hybrids of the 
hare and rabbit are fertile, not only with either hares or rabbits, 
but with each other.” 
Again, Simpson in his little book, “The Wild Rabbit in a New 
Aspect,” a second edition of which was published in 1908, states definitely 
(p. 82): 
“ The Belgian hare is a hybrid between the hare and the rabbit, 
and, as such, has been a puzzle to naturalists, because it is almost the 
only hybrid that is fertile and can perpetuate its kind.” 
Unfortunately these views are quite erroneous, and could only be true 
in the event of both parents having been rabbits. After what has been 
stated in our article on the Common Hare as to the very different con- 
ditions of the rabbit and hare at birth — ^the young of the former being 
naked and blind, while those of the latter are clothed with fur and have 
their eyes open — it needs not much reflection to conclude that a cross 
between these two species is a physiological impossibility. Darwin, writing 
on domestic rabbits and their variation,* observed: 
“ From what we hear of the late marvellous success in rearing 
hybrids between the hare and rabbit, it is possible, though not probable^ 
from the great difficulty in making the first cross, that some of the 
larger races which are coloured like the hare, may have been modified 
by crosses with this animal. Nevertheless, the chief differences in 
the skeletons of the several domestic breeds cannot have been derived 
from a cross with the hare.” 
In conclusion, it may be said emphatically, in the words of Major Barrett 
Hamilton, f that no proof has yet been advanced that two such naturally 
antipathetic animals having such diverse structure, habits, glandular 
secretions, and odours, and such entirely different young, have ever united 
and produced offspring. 
A great deal of legendary lore is interwoven with the natural history 
of the hare, to detail which would be out of place in a work like the present; 
but as the writer has been frequently asked two curious questions, namely, 
(1) whether hares chew the cud, and (2) whether a hare always sleeps 
* The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1868, vol. i, p. 105. 
t British Mammals, p. 238. 
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