Page:The Hare.djvu/54

32 individual of either species may actually overlap each other. '

Mr. Barrett Hamilton measured the successive leaps of an Irish hare while chased by a dachshund, and found them to consist of the following distances measured in inches:—90, 46, 90, 45, 86, 42, 62, 44, 86, 47, 60, 120. 'The snow being hard and frozen at the top, the animal did not sink into it, but left two slight but clearly recognisable footmarks on its surface after each leap. The measurements were made from one pair of marks on the snow to the next pair, and not, as in the following measurements, from one mark made by a hind foot to the next made by a hind foot. They are rough, but are probably accurate to within an inch or two. The largest leap, ten feet, will compare very favourably with the measurements given by Dr. Shufeldt of the leaps of the American hare, which he describes as a "big hare," and therefore likely to make a longer leap than our own. Probably the hare whose leap I measured would have added another foot to her best efforts if she had had a brace of greyhounds at her heels. I found that the length of the leaps taken by a hare, when merely wandering about, was close on thirty inches from the mark made by one hind foot to the next one made by that foot, or