in zoology. See LEPUS.

The buck rabbits, like our boar cats, will kill the young ones if they can get at them; and the does in the warrens prevent this, by covering their rocks, or nests, with gravel or earth, which they close up artificially with the hinder part of their bodies, that it is hard to find them out. They never suckle their young ones at any other time than early in the morning and late at night; and always, for eight or ten days, close up the hole at the mouth of the nest, in this careful manner, when they go out. After this they begin to leave a small opening, which they increase by degrees; till at length, when they are about three weeks old, the mouth of the hole is left wholly open that they may go out; for they are at that time grown big enough to take care of themselves, and to feed on grass.

People who keep rabbits tame for profit, breed them in hutches; but these must be kept very neat and clean, else they will be always subject to diseases. Care must be taken also to keep the bucks and does apart till the latter have just kindled; then they are to be turned to the bucks again, and to remain with them till they fawn and run from them.

The general direction for the choosing of tame rabbits Rabbit.

bits is, to pick the largest and fairest; but the breeder should remember that the skins of the silver-haired ones sell better than any other. The food of the tame rabbits may be colewort and cabbage-leaves, carrots, parsnips, apple-rinds, green corn, and vetches, in the time of the year; also vine-leaves, grass, fruits, oats, and oatmeal, milk-thistles, fow-thistles, and the like: but with these moist foods they must always have a proportionable quantity of the dry foods, as hay, bread, oats, bran, and the like, otherwise they will grow pot-bellied, and die. Bran and grains mixed together have been also found to be very good food. In winter they will eat hay, oats, and chaff, and these may be given them three times a-day; but when they eat green things, it must be observed that they are not to drink at all, for it would throw them into a droopy. At all other times a very little drink serves their turn, but that must always be fresh. When any green herbs, or grass, are cut for their food, care must be taken that there be no hemlock among it; for though they will eat this greedily among other things when offered to them, yet it is sudden poison to them.

Rabbits are subject to two principal infirmities. First, the rot, which is caused by giving them too large a quantity of greens, or from giving them fresh gathered with the dew or rain hanging in drops upon them. It is over-moisture that always causes this disease. The greens therefore are always to be given dry; and a sufficient quantity of hay, or other dry food, intermixed with them, to take up the abundant moisture of their juices. On this account the very best food that can be given them, is the shortest and sweetest hay that can be got, of which one load will serve two couples a year; and out of this stock of 200, 200 may be eat in the family, 200 sold to the market, and a sufficient number kept in case of accidents.

The other general disease of these creatures is a sort of madness: this may be known by their wallowing and tumbling about with their heels upwards, and hopping in an odd manner into their boxes. This distemper is supposed to be owing to the rankness of their feeding; and the general cure is the keeping them low, and giving them the prickly herb called *rare-thistle* to eat.

The general computation of males and females is, that one buck-rabbit will serve for nine does: some allow 10 to one buck; but those who go beyond this, always suffer for it in their breed.

The wild rabbits are either to be taken by small cur-dogs, or by spaniels bred up to the sport; and the places of hunting those who struggle from their burrows, is under close hedges or bushes, or among corn-fields and fresh pastures. The owners use to course them with small greyhounds; and though they are seldom killed this way, yet they are driven back to their burrows, and are prevented from being a prey to others. The common method is by nets called *purse-nets*, and ferrets. The ferret is sent into the hole to fetch them out; and the purse-net being spread over the hole, takes them as they come out. The ferrets mouths must be muffled, and then the rabbit gets no harm. For the more certain taking of them, it may not be improper to pitch up a hay-net or two, at a small distance from the burrows that are intended to be hunted: thus very few of the number that are attempted will escape.

Some who have not ferrets smoke the rabbits out of their holes with burning brimstone and orpiment. This certainly brings them out into the nets: but then it is a very troublesome and offensive method; and is very detrimental to the place, as no rabbit will, of a long time, afterwards come near the burrows which have been fum'd with those stinking ingredients.

The testicle of a rabbit is a very good object for examining the structure of this part of generation in animals. The whole substance of the testicle in this animal is made up of vessels, which lie in round folds in the manner of the smaller intestines: but then both ends of each roll meet at their insertion, which seems to be made into the *ductus nervosus*; and every one of these little rolls is curiously embroidered with other vessels, which, from their red colour, appear to be arteries and veins. The several little rolls lie in ranges, disposed with an uniformity which is very agreeable to the eye. Every one of these rolls is not a single and entire tube, but each consists of several tubes, beside the veins and arteries which embroider it. This is best distinguished by the cutting one of the rolls transversely, and then examining the cut end with a glass, which will appear to be made up of the cut and open ends of four, five, or more parallel tubes, which together form the roll, or single tube, as it appears to the eye, being all wrapped up in one common and very thin membrane. These are so tender that they cannot be explicated and viewed distinctly, as De Graeff tells us those of the testicles of a rat and of some other animals may. These however, as well as the others, are only made up of a congeries of vessels, and the liquors, which are their contents, without any intermediate substance, or anything of that parenchyma which many authors have talked of. The testicles of a bull have the greatest appearance of a fleshy texture of those of any known animal; yet even these afford no particle of parenchyma, or flesh, when examined by glasses in any sort of preparation, whether boiled, raw, soaked in spirits, or in whatever other state. The testicles of various animals are very variously composed, but all in this general manner of vessels variously rolled and folded together; and even the human testicles are of the same sort; being composed solely of rolls of vessels, without any intermediate substance, be it called by whatever name, but only consisting of vessels and their liquors.