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of these it has been recently introduced, yet it was known in the Western
Hebrides in 1677. It is believed that the island of Canna derives its name from
Kanin (the Isle of Rabbits); in Coll nearly all the Rabbits are black. Rabbits
are numerous on the Bass Rock and in most of the islands of Orkney and Shetland.
In Ireland the Rabbit is abundant or scarce according to the amount of
preservation afforded.
Habits.— Unlike the hares, which are generally found singly or in pairs,
Rabbits are sociable animals and like to consort together in great numbers, where
they form large burrows in the sandy soil to which they retreat in the presence
of danger. Unless the weather is fine and dry, when they lie out for the day in
‘ forms’ among the herbage, they keep indoors until sunset and spend the night
and the early hours of the morning in search of food. The time of coming out
to feed varies considerably according to the weather and the season, and though
it is possible to see some Rabbits abroad and feeding at all hours of the day,
this can hardly be said to be a general rule. The places most affected by Rabbits
and where they thrive best are open sandy downs where grass is to be found and
where there are retreats in the shape of bracken and gorse coverts. In such
districts Rabbits swarm if protected.
Rabbits are by no means non-polygamous, as one writer states. And yet they
often actually pair. Mr. T. Speedy says he has seen a male Rabbit rendering assistance
to the female by carrying into the burrow materials for the nest. On the whole,
however, their morals are of the loosest description; it is merely a question of the
meeting of a male with a female ready to breed. They will pair at six months
old, and a prolific female in a good season will have as many as six litters.
When the female Rabbit finds herself ready to produce her young, she travels
some distance from the main burrow and in a single night digs out a new hole
with an apartment about two feet long which she lines with fur from her belly
and a few leaves or chips of bracken, & C . 1 In the position of these isolated holes
female Rabbits often exhibit a complete disregard for man. Their one idea seems
to be to escape the attention of the male Rabbits of the main burrow. I have
known two female Rabbits to come right out of St. Leonard’s Forest from a
burrow half a mile away and dig nesting-holes under the chicken-houses of my
neighbour’s garden where men, fowls, and dogs were moving about all day. In
marshes and heather grounds it is not uncommon to find Rabbits dispensing with
1 Bingley remarks that the female Rabbit when she leaves her breeding hole ‘ closes the hole, by means of her hinder
parts, so very artificially with earth, as even to render the aperture difficult to be found.’
the burrow and placing their young in a slight cavity or ‘ form.’ As female
Rabbits often move their young in case of danger, such as floods, these open-air
homes m a yM the result of expediency.1 The usual breeding season is from
February to September, but female Rabbits with young have been noticed in every
month of the year. Females breeding ‘0 late as October and November are
frequently animals born early in the same year.
The period of gestation Jfe twenty-eight or twenty-nine days, and the number
of young varies .-from five to nine. At first the young are naked and blind. The
ears are closed until the twelfth day, and they can erect them on the thirteenth
day. The eyes are opened on the eleventh day, and they shed the first pelage
when three months old. During the summer the young Rabbits are continually
enlarging the burrow or creating fresh ones close to that in which they were born.
The usual burrow consists of one main entrance, which bends downward at a steep
angle for from four to eight feet, according to the soil, and then turns’ upwards and
opens into the main retreat, where the family live and cuddle together for the
greater part of the day. From this chamber extend one or more galleries to the
surface, whose exitsjigenerally smaller than the main entrance, are used as bolt
holes in case of emergency.
The intelligence of the Rabbit §1 not remarkable;|i: In fact it may be placed
very low down in the scale of animal life if judged by brain power. It has a few
simple wiles and methods of communicating danger, which do not baffle its natural
enemies in the smallest degree. The most common form of expressing alarm is
the stamping of the hind feet on the hard ground. When you place a ferret in
a burrow you will often hear this curious throb underground beneath your feet.
Again, when a Rabbit catches sight of you and it thinks that its comrades have
not noticed your presence, it stamps thus and flicks its stern with the white ensign
:| | f danger into the air. Very often alarmed Rabbits rush straight for the entrance
of their holes and stay there stamping, evidently to warn those which are still
within the burrow.
To understand the ways of wild Rabbits, and to be on terms of the closest
intimacy with them, it- is only necessary to climb into a tree above and in front
of some large burrow near the edge of a wood. As evening draws on, the
1 See Zoologist, 1877, p. 18; and Ann. Scot. N at. H ist. 1904, p. 66. In this last note R. Service says that he found a
Rabbit’s nest placed ‘ a good bit above ground in the midst of some tangled old brown fronds of the male fern in Craigend
Wood.’ This nest contained five young, sixteen or seventeen days old; the nest was made of breast-down and placed neatly
among the fern fronds; there was no burrow near.