Page:The Hare.djvu/27

Rh prime condition in the summer months. One would imagine that the brown hare should thrive well on the fat pastures of the north of Ireland; perhaps the fact that the Irish hare already holds the field may be adverse to the successful naturalisation of the former animal. The brown hare has no incapacity for adapting its life to altered conditions. To my mind, the success which has attended the introduction of the brown hare into New Zealand is a very remarkable fact. Who would have imagined that hares would ever become numerous enough in our distant colony to render the exportation of their skins to the mother country a profitable undertaking? Perhaps Irish sportsmen are contented to possess the varying hare, and have no ambition to see the finer animal naturalised in their distressful country. Mr. Barrett Hamilton, who is making a special study of the quadrupeds of Ireland, has been good enough to inform me that some isolated attempts have been made to establish the brown hare in his own country. He says that the experiments that have been made have so far proved disappointing. The brown hare certainly manages to exist in certain private parks in Ireland, but it has not so far succeeded in extending its range in that island as a truly wild animal. Though absent from Ireland as an indigenous mammal, the