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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
It is evident that the show-fight instinct cannot have been 
developed in Himalayan rabbits by means of natural selection, 
but it is no less evident that if it ever arose in wild rabbits it 
would be preserved and intensified by such means. 
The following observation of my own on a previously 
unnoticed instinct displayed by wild rabbits is, I think, of 
sufficient interest to render. Most people are aware that 
if a rabbit is shot near the mouth of its burrow, the 
animal will employ the last remnant of its life in struggling 
into it. Having several times observed that wounded 
rabbits which had thus escaped appeared again several 
days afterwards above ground, lying dead a few feet from 
the mouth of the burrow, I wished to ascertain whether 
the wounded animals had themselves come out before 
dying, possibly for air, or had been taken out by their 
companions. I therefore shot numerous rabbits while 
they were sitting near their burrows, taking care that the 
distance between the gun and the animal should be such 
as to insure a speedy, though not an immediate death. 
Having marked the burrows at which I shot rabbits in 
this manner I returned to them at intervals for a fort- 
night or more, and found that about one-half of the 
bodies appeared again on the surface in the way described. 
That this reappearance above ground is not due to the 
victim’s own exertions, I am now quite satisfied ; for not 
only did two or three days generally elapse before the 
body thus showed itself — a period much too long for a 
severely wounded rabbit to survive — but in a number of 
cases decomposition had set in. Indeed, on one occasion 
scarcely anything of the animal was left save the skin 
and bones. This was in a large warren. 
It is a curious thing that I have hitherto been unable 
to get any bodies returned to the surface, of rabbits 
which I inserted into their burrows after death. I account 
for this by supposing that the stench of the decomposing 
carcass is not so intolerable to the other occupants of the 
burrow when it is near the orifice as it is when further 
in. Similarly, I find that there is not so good a chance 
of bodies being returned from an extensive warren of 
intercommunicating holes, as there is from smaller war- 
