The Hare lives chiefly in cultivated fields, where it resides in a small depression of the surface, which is called its “form.” It shifts the situation of this simple residence according to the season, selecting a shady spot in summer, and a sunny one in winter, and going into cover in wet weather. It is rather a nocturnal or crepuscular than a day-feeding animal, although it may not unfrequently be seen abroad in the day. In the evening and early in the morning it is most active, passing the brighter hours at rest in its form. When out in the field in search of food it goes hopping along among the herbage and cultivated plants, every now and then sitting upright on its haunches and listening with erected ears for the slightest sound indicative of approaching danger. Its food is exclusively of a vegetable nature, but it seems to embrace pretty nearly the whole round of cultivated plants. Cruciferous plants appear to be amongst its favourite articles of diet, but it also does much damage to fields of young wheat. In the winter, when the open fields are covered with snow frozen hard, and, indeed, sometimes in the summer, the Hare will make his way into gardens in search of food, or, if this resource is not at hand, into plantations of young trees, where it will gnaw off and feed upon the bark, thus destroying great numbers of the trees. Mr. S. Mawson has recorded finding the stomach of a Hare killed in winter filled with hawthorn berries. After its wanderings the Hare always returns to its own form. Hares pair when they are about a year old, and from that time produce several broods every year, each consisting of from two to five young, which are born covered with hair and with their eyes open. From Mr. Bell’s statement, these animals would appear to breed almost all the year round; he says that in mild winters young Hares have been found in January, and that he has known breeding continue till the middle of November. When captured young, the Hare may be easily tamed, and become an amusing pet, as, indeed, will be familiar to almost every one, through Cowper’s account of his Hares. Formerly the Hare used to be trained by jugglers to perform various tricks, one of which was the beating of a tambourine with its fore-feet, with which the animal will of its own accord drum upon the back of an offending companion. A relic of this practice is to be recognised in a common toy, which shows a small Hare sitting and beating a tambourine, its fore limbs being set in motion by the turning of the wheels of its stand. The Common Hare is found spread over the greater part of Europe, from the south of Sweden and northern Russia to the Mediterranean and the Caucasus. It does not occur in Ireland. It varies somewhat in colour in different localities, and although it does not become white in winter, the northern forms show a tendency in that direction, and the others acquire a greyish tint at the approach of the cold weather. [Illustration: COMMON HARE.]