same weight and size as the common hare, but their heads are longer;
consequently, if the lop-eared rabbits had been wild, it might have been
expected that their skulls would have had nearly the same capacity as that
of the skull of the hare. But this is far from being the case; for the
average capacity of the two hare-skulls (Nos. 23, 24) is so much larger
than the average capacity of the seven lop-eared skulls, that the latter
would have to be increased 21 per cent to come up to the standard of the
hare. (4/23. This standard is apparently considerably too low, for Dr.
Crisp ('Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1861 page 86) gives 210 grains as the actual
weight of the brain of a hare which weighed 7 pounds, and 125 grains as the
weight of the brain of a rabbit which weighed 3 pounds 5 ounces, that is,
the same weight as the rabbit No. 1 in my list. Now the contents of the
skull of rabbit No. 1 in shot is in my table 972 grains; and according to
Dr. Crisp's ratio of 125 to 210, the skull of the hare ought to have
contained 1632 grains of shot, instead of only (in the largest hare in my
table) 1455 grains.)
I have previously remarked that, if we had possessed many domestic rabbits
of the same average size with the wild rabbit, it would have been easy to
compare the capacity of their skulls. Now the Himalayan, Moscow, and Angora
rabbits (Nos. 11, 12, 13 of Table 3) are only a little larger in body and
have skulls only a little longer, than the wild animal, and we see that the
actual capacity of their skulls is less than in the wild animal, and
considerably less by calculation (column 7), according to the difference in
the length of their skulls. The narrowness of the brain-case in these three
rabbits could be plainly seen and proved by external measurement. The
Chinchilla rabbit (No. 14) is a considerably larger animal than the wild
rabbit, yet the capacity of its skull only slightly exceeds that of the
wild rabbit. The Angora rabbit, No. 13, offers the most remarkable case;
this animal in its pure white colour and length of silky fur bears the
stamp of long domesticity. It has a considerably longer head and body than
the wild rabbit, but the actual capacity of its skull is less than that of
even the little wild Porto Santo rabbits. By the standard of the length of
skull the capacity (see column 7) is only half of what it ought to have
been! I kept this individual animal alive, and it was not unhealthy nor
idiotic. This case of the Angora rabbit so much surprised me, that I
repeated all the measurements and found them correct. I have also compared
the capacity of the skull of the Angora with that of the wild rabbit by
other standards, namely, by the length and weight of the body, and by the
weight of the limb-bones; but by all these standards the brain appears to
be much too small, though in a less degree when the standard of the limb-
bones was used; and this latter circumstance may probably be accounted for
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