The Rabbit

The Rabbit

The Rabbit

The Rabbit

Hardcover

$30.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

The rabbit has fed and clothed the nation, has altered our landscape, has kept thousands of us in paid employment, has kept starvation at bay during two world wars and now provides all sorts of possibilities for the future. And how have we thanked it? We introduced myxomatosis and killed it by the million. Jill Mason puts the currently under-rated wild rabbit back into context. With lovely photographic illustrations by David Mason, she explains its lifecycle, its behaviour, breeding, feeding habits and, above all, its incredible adaptability and resourcefulness, which brings the species back from the brink to pest proportions again and again, in all corners of the earth, from semi-desert to meadowland. With a fascinating reference section on the sites of the UK's former commercial warrens.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781906122980
Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books
Publication date: 11/15/2015
Pages: 192
Product dimensions: 7.40(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jill Mason was one of Britain's first women gamekeepers, a job which she enjoyed for over 30 years. She has lived and worked in the countryside all her life and writes for several country and fieldsports magazines.

Jill's husband David, formerly also a gamekeeper, is now retired and an enthusiastic and dedicated photographer of wildlife and the countryside. They live in a village in Norfolk.

See above.

Read an Excerpt

Although hares and rabbits are completely different species, their identities over the centuries have often become muddled because they are so similar in appearance. Whether portrayed in art, sculpture, symbols or folklore, there is often doubt as to which is which, although anything in Britain pre-dating the Norman invasion is undoubtedly a hare.
Over the centuries, the hare has morphed into the Easter Bunny in Britain. In Anglo-Saxon times, Eostre was the pagan goddess of spring, moon and dawn and the hare was her sacred animal. It was said to lay an egg (a symbol of fertility) but before a hare could be reborn it had to die which was why, in those days, it was sacrificed by being hunted and the flesh eaten. This took place during the spring festival around the time of the vernal equinox, March 21st, and was known as Eastre or Aestre, the festival evolved from the name of the goddess Eostre/Ostara. It was a celebration of her fertility, when everything came to life again after the long dark winter. When Christianity replaced paganism, it retained the festival and renamed it Easter, the hare was disowned and replaced with a rabbit but the connection with eggs survived.
The hare had been dismissed by the Church for its pagan connections, but the rabbit simply inherited the superstitions that had been attached to it. To see a black rabbit was a bad omen and to kill one, often locally known as 'the parson', heralded misfortune. It therefore followed that seeing a white rabbit brought good luck and was thought to be a sign that something out of the ordinary was likely to happen, as Alice discovered when she followed the White Rabbit into Wonderland. In Titian's painting of the Madonna and the Rabbit c1530, the white rabbit depicts fertility and purity.
It wasn't very long ago that children would superstitiously chant 'rabbits', 'white rabbits' or 'rabbits and hares' before they spoke any other words to bring them luck on the first day of each month. Hares and rabbits over time have become fused together and the foot from either supposedly brings good luck and can ward off evil. A rabbit's foot would even be placed in a baby's cot or pram to protect the child. These superstitions are ancient: pre-600BC, people believed a rabbit's foot could protect its owner from danger and harm. This 'lucky' association occurs in Western Europe, China, North and South America and some African countries.

Table of Contents

Glossary of Terms 6

Introduction 7

1 The Natural History of the Rabbit 9

2 Wild Rabbits around the World 33

3 Rabbits in the UK 43

4 Rabbit Diseases 51

5 Rabbits in Sport 57

6 Methods for Control 65

7 Culinary Matters 83

8 Rabbits in Myth, Legend, Fiction and Art 87

9 History of Warrens 95

10 The Rabbit Fur Industry 113

11 Rabbit Warrens - Law and Punishment 123

12 Location of Historic Warrens 129

Index 191

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews