iiLACK HARES, — LAND CRAB. 
739 
select the best of vegetables, and crop them when in the fullest vigour, 
which they make into excellent hay by drying it. These ricks 
occasion fertility among the rocks, for the relics, mixed with the dung 
of the animal, rot in the barren chasms, and form a soil productive 
of vegetables. These ricks are also of great service to people who 
hunt sables ; for their horses would often perish, if they had not the 
provision of these little industrious animals to support them ; which 
is easily to be discovered by their height and form, even when covered 
with snow. The people of Jakutz feed both their horses and cattle 
with the relics of the winter stocks of the hares. These animals are 
neglected as a food by mankind, but are the prey of sables and the 
Siberian weasels. They are likewise greatly infested with a sort of 
gad-fly, which lodges its egg in their skin in August and September, 
which often proves destructive to them. 
Black Hares. 
Mr. Muller says, he once saw two black hares in Siberia, of a 
wonderful fine gloss, and as full a black as jet. Near Casan was 
taken another, in the middle of winter 1768. In the south and west 
provinces of Russia is a mixed breed of hares, between this and the 
common species. It sustains, during winter only, a partial loss of 
colour; the sides and more exposed parts of the ears and legs in that 
season becoming white, the other parts retaining their colours. This 
variety is unknown beyond the Uralian chain. They are called by 
the Russians, Russacks ; they take them in great numbers in snares, 
and export their skins to England and other places. The Russians 
and Tartars, like the ancient Britons, esteem the flesh of hares 
as impure. 
The Land Crab. 
This creature inhabits the Bahama islands, as well as most lands 
between the tropics, and feeds upon vegetables. These animals live 
not only in a kind of orderly society in the retreats of the mountains, 
but regularly once a year march down to the sea-side in a body of 
some millions at a time. As they multiply in great numbers, they 
choose the month of April or May to begin their expedition, and 
then sally out by thousands from the stumps of hollow trees, from 
the clefts of rocks, and from the holes which they dig for themselves 
under the surface of the earth. At that tinie the w'hole ground is 
covered with this band of adventurers ; there is no setting: down one’s 
foot without treading upon them. The sea is their place of destina- 
tion, and to that they direct their march with right-lined precision. 
No geometrician could send them to their destination by a shorter 
course they never turn to the right or left, whatever obstacles inter- 
vene, if they are at all surmountable ; and if they even meet with a 
house, they will attempt to scale the walls, to keep the unbroken tenor 
of their way. 
But though this be the general order of their route, they, upon 
other occasions, are obliged to conform to the face of the country ; 
