(5) A tradition has long attached to the Moor that the hare and rabbit do occasionally inter-breed.
Mr. Heape replied:—“I am aware that many naturalists deny that hares and rabbits will breed together. I am not, however, myself of that opinion, but I never had satisfactory proof of such a cross occurring.” Further enquiry led to the following facts:—In the year 1773 the Abbe Domenico Gagliari got two litters from a female hare by a male rabbit. Richard Thursfield also got hybrid’s of these two species. M. Roux, in 1847, established a breed of “Leporides” in Angonleme, where he bred largely hybrids of hares and rabbits, and these hybrids were fertile with both parent species and among themselves. Baron de Gleichen states that at Hoching, Canton de la Prusse, Polonaise, hybrids of hare (female), and rabbits (male) are generally known. He says, however, that M. Brocca, the French savant, states that there are anatomical differences between hare and rabbit which make it, antecedently, improbable that they should inter-breed. I have myself shot three of these hybrids on the Ostler Ground, and have one of them stuffed. In the year 1897 Sir Henry Hawley shot a similar specimen in Haltham Wood, some five miles from Woodhall; more recently (Oct. 4th, 1898), the Rev. C. E. Chapman, then rector of Scrivelsby, shot another in New York Fen; one was occasionally seen on the Ostler Ground in 1898, and one was mentioned in “Land and Water,” March 5, 1892, as having been shot on the Moors, at Parkend, in Northumberland. I may add that a cross between a rabbit and guinea pig is in the possession of a person at Horncastle; and I have lately heard of a cross between black game and the capercailzie in Scotland. But the following somewhat analogous cases have created special interest. Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, has bred a cross between a male Berchell’s zebra and a mare pony, of the Isle of Rum breed, half wild, lent for the
experiment by Lord Arthur Cecil. The pony was jet black; the foal resulting, except over the hind quarters, had as many stripes as the zebra sire, the stripes being fawn colour, with background nearly black. In form it closely resembled a well-bred foal. As another interesting case of a similar kind, Lord Morton has bred a cross between a male quagga and a nearly pure-bred Arab mare; and Lord Tankerville has, more than once, bred a cross between the famous wild Chillingham bull (Bos Urus Primigenius) and a shorthorn cow.
An interesting variety of the hare is also found in Woodhall and the neighbourhood. This is the albino or white hare. Some 30 or more years ago one was frequently seen in the parishes of Langton and Woodhall, and eventually was shot in Thimbleby. They were then, so far as the writer knows, in abeyance for some years. But within the last decade heredity has asserted itself, and they have reappeared in increased numbers, and would doubtless become an established variety if allowed to multiply. In September, 1894, one of the Woodhall tenants killed, in the harvest field, a three-quarter-grown white leveret. In 1896 the writer presented to the Natural History Museum, at Lincoln, a fine albino specimen, also shot in Woodhall, with two small white leverets, accidentally killed in the harvest field at Langton. Since then, attention having been drawn to their existence, a number of instances occurring in the neighbourhood have been recorded. One was shot at Ranby as far back as Oct. 19, 1860; two were seen in Clayworth in 1896; one was shot in Baumber, Sept. 17, 1896; one shot at Thorpe Tilney, in Timberland parish, with slight tinge of brown on the ears, October, 1897; one shot in Timberland in 1895; one being seen still at large in Thorne Tilney in May, 1898; one shot in Branston, September, 1895, half grown; two shot at Bracebridge in 1893 or 1894; one shot in Wispington in 1896. [65] On one occasion, when
shooting in Kirkstead, the writer shot (right and left) a couple of hares with white face and forelegs, one of which he has stuffed.
We commonly speak of the cunning of the fox, but Mr. E. A. Pease, M.P., in his recent book, “Hunting Reminiscences” (Thacker & Co., 1895, p. 119), says: “The hare is really a much more rusé animal than the fox; can steal better away, and, once started, there is no end to her wiles and dodges.” Of this cunning, with a view to self-preservation, I can give instances. It has been maintained that hares never take to water, but a correspondence was carried on in the newspaper a few years ago (see “Morning Post,” Nov. 14, 1892), in which instances were given of their doing so. I have myself seen a hare, which has eluded the greyhounds, swim across a moat, almost surrounding the house in which I am writing; and then steal away to the cover of some large ferns in a sheltered nook in the garden. Some years ago a baronet visited a relative of mine in this neighborhood, and brought with him a pack of beagles. We used to run on foot after these in pursuit of hares. It is known that a hare, when getting exhausted, has not the strong scent of one just started. As we ran over a rough ploughed field, I have seen a hare, when nearly tired out, thrust another sitting hare out of her “form,” and take her place. The pack of beagles passed over the worn-out hare squatting in the furrow, and rushed forward with a fresh burst of music in their rich deep tones, on the strong scent of the hare just set on foot. I passed the squatting hare, but had not the heart to betray her, feeling that she deserved to reap the reward of her cleverness. When hunted by harriers, hares often “double” on their track, and so throw the hounds out. I here give a very clever instance of this, which I myself once witnessed. On one occasion, sitting on the South Downs, watching the movements of a pack of harriers in the distance, I saw “puss” gradually approaching me. In a hilly country like the Downs, a hare, from the great length and propelling power of her hind legs, gains considerably upon the pack in running up hill, and loses ground in a descent. The hare in question had just
descended a steep Down side, the hounds gaining rapidly upon her. It was what may be termed “a squeak” for her life, when, in the “dean” below, [67] she reached, just in time, the shelter of a clump of gorse. Working her way through this, she stole out on the opposite side to the pack, and at a tremendous pace faced the hill, near the top of which I was sitting, by a chalk quarry. In the ascent she distanced the hounds once more, but she was getting done, and, in the gentle breeze which floated towards me, I distinctly heard her panting as she bounded upward. But here her instinctive cunning came into play. The hill top was a few feet above me, some twenty yards away. I sat motionless, and, in her anxiety about her pursuers, she never observed me. She passed me, breathing heavily, and sprang along as far as the hill top; there, just at the brow, she paused, then cantered forward a few yards, returned, and repeated this more than once. Then, turning suddenly towards me, she made four or five huge bounds, only just touching the ground, and dropped into the chalk quarry a few feet below me, and crept under the shelter of some dwarf thorn bushes. Her object was manifest. By passing more than once over her own tracks, on the hill top, she created a strong scent, which the breeze, just catching it at the brow, would carry further forward. By her leaps towards the quarry, she had left but a slight scent, and under those thorn bushes she was doubtless waiting tremblingly the result of her ruse. I remained motionless, watching the issue. The pack came somewhat laboriously up the hill side, keeping close to the line she had taken; and a pretty sight it was, as a large sheet would almost have covered them, as they held on compactly together. They passed, as the hare had done, within a few yards of the chalk quarry; pressed on to the brow of the hill, and thence followed the scent which had been blown on beyond it. Presently there was a check, and the music ceased. The master never thought of “harking back,” his pack having followed a strong scent beyond the brow; but pushed on to a spinney lying on the slope of the next “dean.” I sat for a time longer by the quarry, and presently I saw puss, having recovered her breath, emerge from her hiding place and steal away, bent, doubtless, on reaching some distant secure retreat before her limbs became stiff from the unwonted exertion.
I have known a hare, when hard pressed by the harriers, enter a tunnel under a field gateway; but here instinct rather fails her; for, too often, it is only avoiding one mode of death by courting another. If there is water in the ditch, running through the tunnel, the obstruction caused by her body makes the water rise, and she is drowned; or, if she stays any time in the tunnel, her cramped limbs get so stiff after her exertions, that she cannot get out.
There is one kind of foe which the hare finds more difficult to shake off, or elude, than a pack of harriers or beagles. Stoats, foumarts, polecats, et id genus omne, are becoming scarcer every year; although the writer was recently told of a marten-cat—probably the Pine-marten (martes abietum)—being killed in a tree, and sold for 10s. as a rarity. I was a witness of the following:—Walking, in the small hours of the morning, in a parish contiguous to Woodhall, on my way to a stream where I was going to fish, I saw a hare in a field adjoining the road, which was leaping about in a most extraordinary fashion, starting hither and thither, plunging into the rushes, springing into the air, and performing all sorts of strange antics, which I could only account for, had she been “as mad as a March hare,” as the saying is; but this was in the month of May. Presently she rushed forward, occasionally leaping into the air, towards the fence which separated me from the fields. I expected to see her appear through the hedge, in front of me; but she did not come. Out of curiosity I got over the fence, when I saw the hare lying, a few yards further on, stretched out as though dead. I went up to her, and found that she was, indeed, quite dead; and fast on her neck was a weasel, so gorged with her blood, that its usually slender body was quite bloated. Following the proverbial national instinct, I killed the weasel; carried the hare to a footpath, and left it there, that some labourer passing by might take it home to regale his family.
This incident leads me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, and evidently in a state of the greatest terror. I pulled up in order to discover the cause of this alarm. The rabbit re-entered the cover a few yards further on; but presently,