74. The ALPINE HARE (Lepus Alpinus) is a Siberian animal, destitute of tail, of tawny colour, with rounded, brown ears, and brown feet.
Amongst the mountains of Siberia alpine hares are very numerous. They live in burrows or holes under ground, and store up, beneath the shelter of trees or rocks, large ricks of dried grass and other vegetables for their winter's subsistence. These collections are anxiously sought after by persons engaged in the hunting of sables ([55]); and, in many instances, they are the means of preserving their horses from perishing by famine. Some of the adjacent peasantry also search them out as food for their horses and cattle. The skins of the alpine hares supply one of the articles of commerce betwixt the Russians and Chinese.
75. The RABBIT (Lepus cuniculus) is a British quadruped belonging to the same tribe as the hare; and is principally distinguishable from that animal by its proportionally shorter ears, and by the hind legs being only one-third of the length of the body.
The colour of the wild rabbit is dusky brown above, and paler or whitish on the under parts. In the domestic rabbit the colour is various, white, grey, black, or black and white.
These animals inhabit nearly all the warmer parts of Europe, as well as several of the temperate countries of Asia and Africa.
There are farms in many parts of England, particularly in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, where the breeding of rabbits is rendered an extremely advantageous pursuit. The most desirable situations are those in which the soil is loose and sandy, and where the ground rises, in different parts into low hills. Such lands can be more profitably employed as rabbit-warrens than any others, from the greater facility with which the animals are able to form their burrows in the earth, and the less liability they have to be flooded, by the falling of heavy rains.
In a commercial view rabbits are animals of much greater importance than hares; because, from their habit of living in greater numbers together, they can be better attended to and managed; and also because they multiply much more rapidly than hares. Their fecundity, indeed, is truly astonishing. They breed several times in the year, and generally produce seven or eight young ones at a birth; and it has been calculated that, if the progeny from a single pair could, without interruption, proceed in the same ratio for four or five years, the whole stock would, even in that short period, amount to more than one million.
The particular uses of the rabbit are nearly the same as those of the hare ([73]). The fur is a principal substance employed in the composition of hats; and such parts of it as are unfit for this purpose may advantageously be adopted for the stuffing of beds and bolsters. Rabbits' skins are also sometimes used as a cheap and warm-trimming for female dress; and the skins themselves, after the hair has been stripped from them, are boiled down, and made into size or glue. The flesh, though, like that of the hare, forbidden to the Jews and Mahometans, is a very delicate and palatable food. We are informed by Pliny, the Roman naturalist, that the ancients had a favourite dish which was made of sucking leverets or rabbits unpaunched. The modes of ascertaining the quality of rabbits as food are nearly the same as those which have been mentioned respecting the hare.
It is customary, in most warrens, to use ferrets ([56]) in the catching of these animals. The ferrets are muzzled and put into the burrows; and, by pursuing the rabbits under ground, they alarm and drive them into nets that are placed over the outlets, in open and extensive grounds other modes are adopted. These, as we are informed by Mr. Daniel, in his work on Rural Sports, are by implements called fold-nets, spring-nets, and a kind of trap called tipes. The fold-nets are set, about midnight, between the burrows and the feeding grounds; the rabbits being driven into them with dogs, and kept enclosed in the folds till morning. The spring-net is generally laid round a haystack, or some other object of inducement for rabbits to collect in numbers. The tipe consists of a large pit or cistern, covered with a floor. This has, near its centre, a small trap-door nicely balanced, into which the rabbits are led by a narrow road or meuse. It was customary formerly to set this kind of trap near a hay-stack; but, since turnips are now grown as food for these animals in an enclosure in the interior of the warren, it is placed within the wall of this enclosure. For a night or two the rabbits are suffered to go through the meuse and over the trap, that they may be familiarized to the place where the turnips are grown. After that the trap-door is unbarred, and immense numbers fall in. On emptying the cistern, the fat rabbits are selected and killed, and the others are turned out upon the turnips to improve. Five or six hundred couples have not unfrequently been taken in one night by this contrivance; and once, in the Driffield warrens, as many as fifteen hundred couples were caught.
Many persons breed rabbits in a tame or domestic state. The skins of these are useful; but, for food, the wild animals are greatly preferable. Care should, at all times, be taken to keep them clean; and, during the breeding season, the males and females must be kept apart. The best food for tame rabbits is the shortest and sweetest hay that can be had; and one load of this will serve two hundred couples for a year.