to the number of leverets produced by the hare in the year. A friend of mine, who has opened a great many doe hares, assures me that only a single leveret is usually produced at a birth. Others consider that it is only young female hares of the year that drop single young ones; and they contend that old hares drop two or three leverets not uncommonly. Five is, apparently, the maximum of leverets ever dropped by English hares; but the reproduction of a greater number is not impossible.
The rates at which most wild animals and birds increase seem to be governed in the main by their relative food supplies. These, taken together with the difficulties which such individuals have had to overcome, before they succeeded in propagating their own kind, enable us to anticipate, however imperfectly, their probable numbers. Colonel Fielden found that the Polar hare produces no fewer than eight young ones. This remarkable circumstance may be explained by the relatively abundant supply of food during a brief Arctic summer. A stern necessity also exists that many individuals should enter the world, since the young leverets are eagerly sought after by their natural enemy, the Arctic fox. But be this as it may, our English hare is usually satisfied to multiply her race on a more modest scale. The doe, if adult,
