Page:The Hare.djvu/58

36 of hares, I would draw attention to a fact which does not seem to be generally recognised, that the hare is an excellent swimmer, and is quite at home in either fresh or salt water. Not that it likes to enter either element. As a rule hares avoid wetting their fur.

If they find themselves obliged to cross a stream in shifting their feeding grounds, they generally search out the narrowest ford, even though the water to be crossed should consist only of a small burn or fellside beck. But it is exceptions that enforce the rule. For example, a hare has been seen to swim the river Elbe in a long reach, where the river is at least 180 yards broad. This involved her swimming more than eighty yards through very rough water. 'A hare intending to mislead its pursuers has been seen spontaneously to quit its seat, and to proceed to a pond at the distance of nearly a mile, and having washed itself push off again through a quantity of rushes. It has, too, been known, when pursued to fatigue by dogs, to thrust another hare from its seat and squat itself down in its place. Jacques du Fouillouse has seen hares swim successively through two or three ponds of which the smallest was eighty paces round.' Yarrell has placed on record an experience of the swimming