slaying of him with strength (of hounds) is a fair thing, for it requireth great mastery on account of her cunning. When a hare ariseth out of her form to go to her pasture or return again to her seat, she commonly goes by one way, and as she goes she will not suffer any twig or grass to touch her, for she will sooner break it with her teeth and make her way. Sometime she sitteth a mile or more from her pasturing, and sometimes near her pasture. But when she sitteth near it, yet she may have been the amount of half a mile or more from there where she hath pastured, and then she ruseth again from her pasture. And whether she go to sit near or far from her pasture she goes so gynnously (cunningly) and wilily that there is no man in this world that would say that any hound could unravel that which she has done, or that could find her. For she will go a bow shot or more by one way, and ruse again by another, and then she shall take her way by another side, and the same she shall do ten, twelve, or twenty times, from thence she will come into some hedge or strength (thicket), and shall make semblance to abide there, and then will make cross roads ten or twelve times, and will make her ruses, and thence she will take some false path, and shall go thence a great way, and such semblance she will make many times before she goeth to her seat. [16] The hare was frequently spoken of in two genders in the same sentence, for it was an old belief that the hare was at one time male, and at another female. See Appendix: Hare. [17] Means here: when the hare has arisen from her form to go to her feeding. Fr. _relever_. G. de F. explains, p. 42: _un lievre se reliève pour aler à son vianders_. Relief, which denoted the act of arising and going to feed, became afterwards the term for the feeding itself. "A hare hath greater scent and is more eagerly hunted when she relieves on green corn" (_Comp. Sportsman_, p. 86). It possibly was used later to denote the excrements of a hare; thus Blome (1686) p. 92, says: "A huntsman may judge by the relief and feed of the hare what she is." [Illustration: THE HARE AND HER LEVERETS (From MS. f. fr. 616, _Bib. Nat._, Paris)]