Page:The Hare.djvu/65

Rh hay for fear of communicating any odour to the snares which they set.

More than forty years ago a Russian zoologist, Middendorf, drew the attention of naturalists to the fact of the brown hare of the low ground interbreeding with the blue mountain hare, and producing fertile offspring. I do not know why this should not often take place. The blue hares keep to the tops of our moors all through the summer, it is true. In snowy weather they often descend to the low grounds, and it sometimes happens that a stray individual chooses to pass the following summer on the land to which she migrated in late autumn.

An intelligent keeper in the service of Macleod of Macleod assures me that hares which he believes to be hybrids have been killed repeatedly on the shooting in his charge, and reports of others have reached me from different quarters. The blue hare is now common, even in the lowlands of Scotland. Of course the chance of her hybridising with her brown or red neighbour becomes more considerable as her breeding range extends.

Professor Fatio states that the brown hares which live among the Alps often come into contact with the blue hares of higher altitudes, and apparently the two species interbreed. The hybrids resemble both their