As some of the largest lop-eared rabbits of which I prepared skeletons were
coloured almost like hares, and as these latter animals and rabbits have,
as it is affirmed, been recently crossed in France, it might be thought
that some of the above-described characters had been derived from a cross
at a remote period with the hare. Consequently I examined skulls of the
hare, but no light could thus be thrown on the peculiarities of the skulls
of the larger rabbits. It is, however, an interesting fact, as illustrating
the law that varieties of one species often assume the characters of other
species of the same genus, that I found, on comparing the skulls of ten
species of hares in the British Museum, that they differed from each other
chiefly in the very same points in which domestic rabbits vary,--namely, in
general proportions, in the form and size of the supra-orbital plates, in
the form of the free end of the malar bone, and in the line of suture
separating the occipital and frontal bones. Moreover two eminently variable
characters in the domestic rabbit, namely, the outline of the occipital
foramen and the shape of the "raised platform" of the occiput, were
likewise variable in two instances in the same species of hare.

VERTEBRAE.

The number is uniform in all the skeletons which I have examined, with two
exceptions, namely, in one of the small feral Porto Santo rabbits and in
one of the largest lop-eared kinds; both of these had as usual seven
cervical, twelve dorsal with ribs, but, instead of seven lumbar, both had
eight lumbar vertebrae. This is remarkable, as Gervais gives seven as the
number for the whole genus Lepus. The caudal vertebrae apparently differ by
two or three, but I did not attend to them, and they are difficult to count
with certainty.