The young ones have their eyes open when brought forth; the mother suckles them about twenty days, after which they separate and provide for themselves; they do not wander far from each other, nor from the place of their birth; yet they live in solitude, each composing itself a form at the distance of sixty or eighty paces; thus when we find a leveret in any place, we are almost certain of finding one or two more in the neighbourhood. They feed more by night than day; and chiefly upon herbs, leaves, fruits, and grain, but above all they prefer those plants which yield a milky juice; they even eat the bark of trees in winter, except that of the alder and lime, neither of which they ever touch. When reared at home they are fed with lettuces and other herbs; but the flesh of these domestic fed hares has always a bad taste. They sleep and repose themselves in their forms during the day, and only live, as it were, in the night, when they range about, feed, and copulate; they may be seen by moonlight playing, leaping, and pursuing each other, but the smallest noise, even the rustling of a falling leaf is sufficient to alarm them; they fly, and in their flight take different ways. Some authors have asserted that hares chew the cud; but I cannot believe this opinion to be well founded, as they have but one stomach, and the conformation of that, as well as the other intestines is altogether different in ruminating animals. The coecum of the latter is small, while those of hares are extremely large; and if we add to the capacity of the stomach this large coecum, we shall easily conceive, that being capable of receiving a great quantity of food, this animal may live upon herbage alone, like the horse and the ass, which have also a large coecum and but one stomach, and consequently cannot ruminate.