Word Finder - hares

definition

Any of several plant-eating animals of the family Leporidae, especially of the genus Lepus, similar to a rabbit, but larger and with longer ears.

definition

The player in a paperchase, or hare and hounds game, who leaves a trail of paper to be followed.

definition

To move swiftly.

definition

To excite; to tease, or worry; to harry.

The hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs.

Hares, for a long period extinct, were reintroduced about 1830, rabbits are very numerous, and the northern limit of the hedgehog is drawn at Lerwick.

The fauna includes the elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, giraffe, lion, leopard, cheetah, roan-antelope, hartebeeste, kudu and many other kinds of antelope, wart-hog, hares, quail, partridge, jungle-fowl, bustard and guinea-fowl.

Hares, rabbits, field-mice, waterrats, rats, squirrels, moles, game-birds, pigeons, and small birds, form the chief food of the wild cat.

Sculptured panels, with conventional motives, peacocks, eagles devouring hares, peacocks drinking from a cup on a tall pillar, are let into both exterior and interior walls, as are roundels of precious marbles, sawn from columns of porphyry, serpentine, verd antique, &c. The adoption of veneer for decoration prohibited any deep cutting, and almost all the sculpture is shallow.

Bears, wild boars, hares, wolves, foxes and wild cats are very common, and in the north sables are found in great numbers.

Among the rodents there are hares, marmots, beavers, squirrels, rats and mice, the last in enormous swarms. Of the larger game the chamois and deer are specially noticeable.

Characteristic forms of this order in northern Asia are the marmots (Arctomys) and the pikas, or tailless hares (Lagomys).

The wild animals found in the district comprise a few tigers, leopards and wild elephants, deer, wild pig, porcupines, jackals, foxes, hares, otters, &c. The green monkey is very common; porpoises abound in the large rivers.

An agricultural lease does not, apart from stipulation, confer any right to kill game, other than hares and rabbits (as to which, see the Ground Game Act 1880, and Game Laws) or any right of fishing.

Mountain hares, partridges and quails afford good sport; baboons and great hawks live in the mountains.

They are used in the pursuit of hares, and, although they are capable of very fast runs, have less endurance than foxhounds, and follow the trail with more care and deliberation.

Hares are uncommon, and the last reddeer was shot in 1814; but wolves, otters and squirrels abound.

Ant-eaters (Orycteropus capensis), porcupines, weasels, squirrels, rock rabbits, hares and cane rats are common in different localities.

Some herds of cattle and horses run wild; but these were, of course, introduced, as were also the wild hogs, the numerous rabbits and the less common hares.

The Rodents are also well represented by various squirrels, mice and hares.

There are no rabbits, but hares (usagi) are to be found in very varying numbers, and those of one species put on a white coat during winter.

Of game, deer, wild boars, hares, snipe and partridges are fairly abundant, while the mountain streams yield trout of excellent quality.

Some are said occasionally to resort to berries and other fruit for food, but as a rule they are carnivorous, feeding chiefly on birds and their eggs, small mammals, as squirrels, hares, rabbits and moles, but chiefly mice of various kinds, and occasionally snakes, lizards and frogs.

The woods are well stocked with red and roe deer, wild boar, hares, rabbits, pheasants, woodcock and snipe.

Of small game, hares, jungle fowl, peacocks, partridges, snipe, woodcock, wild ducks and geese, and green pigeons are numerous in the tarai, and jungle fowl and pheasants in the hills.

Game is fairly abundant; hares and partridges are found in the plains to the north-west, capercailzie in the neighbourhood of Tharandt and Schwarzenberg, and deer in the forests near Dresden.

Mountain and plain and Arctic hares and rabbits are plentiful or scarce in localities, according to seasons or other circumstances.

Hares (and rabbits) have a cosmopolitan distribution with the exception of Madagascar and Australasia; and are now divided into numerous genera and subgenera, mentioned in the article FIG.

North America is the home of numerous hares, some of which are locally known as "cotton-tails" and others as "jackrabbits."

Indeed, despite the fact that they present much diversity of habit - some being arboreal, as the squirrels, many of which are provided with expansions of skin or parachutes on which they glide from tree to tree; some cursorial, as the hares; others jumpers, as the jerboas; others fossorial, as the mole-rats; and others aquatic, as the beavers and waterrats - no important structural modifications are correlated with such diversity of habit.

Post-orbital processes of the frontals exist in squirrels, marmots and hares; but in all other genera they are rudimentary or altogether absent; and the zygoma seldom sends upwards a corresponding process, so that the orbit is more or less completely continuous with the temporal fossa.

The palate is narrow from before backwards, this being especially the case in the hares, where it is reduced to a mere bridge between the premolars; in others, as in the rodent-moles (Bathyerginae), it is extremely narrow transversely, its width being less than that of one of the molar teeth.

The dental formula varies from 1, c. $, 3 (total 28) in the hares and rabbits to i.

All rodents, with the sole exception of the dormice, have a caecum, often of great length and sacculated,, as in hares, the water-rat and porcupines; and the long colon in some, as the hamster and water-rat, is spirally twisted upon itself near the commencement.

There are generally nineteen dorso-lumbar vertebrae (thirteen thoracic and six lumbar), the form of which varies in different genera; in the cursorial and leaping species the lumbar transverse processes are generally very long, and in the hares there are large compressed inferior spines, or hypapophyses.

The scapula is usually narrow, with a long acromion; the clavicles may be altogether absent or imperfect, as in porcupines, cavies and hares, but in most species are well developed.

In the squirrels and porcupines the tibia and fibula are distinct, but in rats and hares they are united, often high up. The hind foot is more variable than the front one, the digits varying in number from five, as in squirrels and rats, to four, as in hares, or even three, as in the capybara, viscacha and agouti.

In hares and pacas the inside of the cheeks is hairy; and in some species, pouched rats and hamsters, there are large internal cheek-pouches lined with hair, which open near the angles of the mouth and extend backwards behind the ears.

The peculiar odour evolved by many rodents is due to the secretions of special glands, which may open into the prepuce, as in Mus, Microtus and Cricetus, or into the rectum, as in Arctomys and Thryonomys, or into the passage common to both, as in the beaver, or into pouches opening near the vent, as in hares, agoutis and jerboas.

The fur varies exceedingly in character, - in some, like the chinchillas and hares, being fine and soft, while in others it is more or less replaced by spines on the upper surface, as in spiny rats and porcupines; these spines in several genera, as Xerus, Acomys, Platacanthomys, Echinothrix, Loncheres and Echinomys, being flattened.

In porcupines and hares the tendons of the flexor digitorum longus and flexor hallucis longus are connected in the foot, while in the rats and squirrels they are separate, and the flexor digitorum longus is generally inserted into the metatarsal of the first toe.

All authorities are agreed in dividing rodents into two great sections or sub-orders, the one, Duplicidentata, comprising only the hares, rabbits and picas, and the other, Simplicidentata, all the rest.

The remaining rodents, which include two families - the picas (Ochotonidae) and the hares and rabbits (Leporidae) - constitute a second sub-order, the Duplicidentata, differing from all the foregoing groups in possessing two pairs of incisors in the upper jaw (of which the second is small, and placed directly behind the large first pair), the enamel of which extends round to their postericr surfaces.

From the picas the hares and rabbits (Leporidae) are distinguished by the imperfect clavicles, the more or less elongated hind-limbs, short recurved tail (absent in one case) and generally long ears.

The cottontails, or wood-rabbits, of North and South America are regarded as forming a genus, Sylvilagus, by themselves, which includes the Brazilian and Paraguay hares, and appears to be chiefly distinguished by a certain feature in the parietal region of the skull.

Goats are fed in considerable number on the brushwood pasture of the hills; and hares (in spite of Aristotle's supposed assertion of their absence) are exceptionally abundant.

In size these animals may be compared roughly to rabbits and hares; and they have rodent-like habits, hunching up their backs after the fashion of some foreign members of the hare-family, more especially the Liu-Kiu rabbit.

The woods and mountains harbour large quantities of game, such as red deer, roedeer, wild boars and hares.

In some cases, as in all the varying hares, in addition to the eyes retaining their normal pigmentation, areas similar in extent and situation to those on the Himalayan rabbits also retain their pigmentation; and in the ptarmigan there is a black band on each side of the head stretching forwards and backwards from the eyeball, and the outer tail feathers are black.

Pickering, still later, showed, in the case of four Norway hares, two of which were injected while in their pigmented or summer coat, and two while in their albino or winter coat, that coagulation occurred in the former cases but not in the latter.

Roebuck and deer are found in a wild state in Gelderland and Overysel, foxes are plentiful in the dry wooded regions on the borders of the country, and hares and rabbits in the dunes and other sandy stretches.

The Carnivora include bears, wolverines, wolves, raccoons, foxes, sables, martens, skunks, kolinskis, fitch, fishers, ermines, cats, sea otters, fur seals, hair seals, lions, tigers, leopards, lynxes, jackals, &c. The Rodentia include beavers, nutrias, musk-rats or musquash, marmots, hamsters, chinchillas, hares, rabbits, squirrels, &c. The Ungulata include Persian, Astrachan, Crimean, Chinese and Tibet lambs, mouflon, guanaco, goats, ponies, &c. The Marsupialia include opossums, wallabies and kangaroos.

Besides these there are many useful, though commonplace, fur-bearing animals like mink, musquash, skunk, raccoon, opossum, hamster, rabbit, hares and moles, that thrive by depredations upon cultivated land.

The white hares, however, of Russia, Siberia and other regions in the Arctic circle are very largely used in the cheaper trade of Europe, America and the British colonies.