Page:The Hare.djvu/30

10 brown hare of the hills is presumably learning to adapt herself to the altered conditions of her existence, which no doubt entails greater exertion than is necessary to the hare which makes its home in the hayfields of the wooded manor. Dr. Fatio has ascertained that the brown hare of the Swiss valleys ranges upon the slopes of the Alpine pastures up to an elevation of 1,600 or 1,700 mètres. In the Grisons, Professor Theobald killed a brown hare at a greater elevation still, viz. at a height of 2,270 mètres above the sea.

We must all have met with the bonnie brown hare in a great variety of situations, from the Kentish and Essex salt marshes to the wolds of Yorkshire and the coalfields of Lancashire. A great change has taken place in the number of hares that are annually bred in England. Go where you may, one meets almost universally with the same lament, that where you would formerly have seen twenty or thirty hares feeding in the fields on a summer evening you will now hardly see a single animal. This melancholy state of things seems to have been brought about mainly by the mischievous and uncalled-for legislation of Sir William Harcourt. There are other factors which may or may not press hardly upon the hare. One obvious point is that hares and rabbits do not thrive very