The hare is scarcely a domestic animal; yet we have an account of one that was so tame as to feed from the hand, lie under a chair in the sitting-room, and appear in every way as easy and comfortable as a lapdog. It now and then went out into the garden, but, after hopping about in the fresh air for a while, it always returned to the house. Its usual companions were a greyhound and a spaniel, with whom it spent its evenings, the whole three playing and sleeping together on the same hearth. What makes the circumstance more remarkable is, that the greyhound and spaniel were both so fond of hare-hunting, that they used often to go out coursing together, without anybody with them. They were like the “Sly Couple,” of whose devotion to the chase an amusing story is told.

A traveller once brought a young hare to such a degree of frolicsome familiarity, that it would run and jump about his sofa and bed; leap upon and pat him with its fore feet; or while he was reading, it would sometimes knock the book out of his hands, as if to claim, like a fondled child, his exclusive attention.