"CONINGER" OR "CONINGRY."
(Vol. vii., p. 182.)
The Latin word for a rabbit is cuniculus, as is shown in the following couplet of Martial:
"Gaudet in effossis habitare cuniculus antris:
Monstravit tacitas hostibus ille vias."—xiii. 60.
The rabbit appears to have been originally peculiar to Spain, Southern France, and the adjoining islands. Strabo (iii. 2. § 6.) says that it is found nearly over the whole of Spain, and in the Balearic islands; and that it reaches as far as Massilia. Polybius (xii. 3.) likewise states it to be a native of Corsica. It was unknown to the Greeks, and is not mentioned by Aristotle in his works on natural history (see Camus, Notes sur l'Histoire des Animaux d'Aristote, p. 278.); nor does it ever occur in the Æsopian fables, although the hare is frequently introduced. Hence it had no native Greek name; and Polybius borrows the Latin word, calling it κύνικλος (compare Athen., ix. p. 400.). Strabo uses the periphrasis of "burrowing hares," γεώρυχοι λαγιδεῖς. Ælian, again, employs the Latin name, which he considers to be of Iberian origin (De Nat. Anim., xiii. 15.). If this be true, the sense of subterranean passage, which cuniculus also bears, is secondary, and not primary (compare Plin. Nat. Hist., viii. 81.).
The language of Varro de Re Rust. (iii. 12.) likewise shows that the rabbit was in his time peculiar to Spain, and had not been introduced into Italy. The meaning of the Hebrew word Saphan, which is translated cony in the authorised version of the Old Testament (Lev. xi. 5.; Deut. xiv. 7.; Ps. civ. 18.; Prov. xxx. 26.), has been fully investigated by biblical critics and naturalists. (See Bochart's Hierozoicon, vol. ii. pp. 409-429., ed. Rosenmüller; Winer, Bibl. Real-Wörterbuch, in Springhase; Penny Cyclopædia, in Hyrax.) It is certainly not the rabbit, which is not a native of Syria and Palestine: but whether this ruminant quadruped, which lives in the rocks, is the jerboa, or a species of hyrax, or some other small edible animal of a like description, is difficult to determine.
From the manner in which Strabo speaks of Spain and the Balearic islands being infested by large numbers of rabbits, it would appear (as Legrand d'Aussy remarks, Vie privée des Français, tom. ii. p. 24.) that the ancients did not eat its flesh. The rabbit is now so abundant in parts of the south of France, that, according to the same author, a sportsman in the islands near Arles who did not kill a hundred, would be dissatisfied with his day's sport. A Provençal gentleman, who in 1551 went out to kill rabbits with some of his vassals, and three dogs, brought home in the evening not less than six hundred.
From the Latin cuniculus have been formed, according to the proper analogy, the Italian coniglio, the Spanish conéjo, and the French conil, sometimes modified into conin (see Diez, Roman. Gramm., vol. ii. p. 264.). From the old French conin was borrowed the English coning or conig, afterwards shortened into cony: and from this word have been formed conigar and coningry or conigry, for rabbit-warren (see Halliwell's Dict., in Conig). Conillus, for a rabbit-warren, occurs in Ducange; conejár is the Spanish term.