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Article: Hare today - but gone tomorrow? The brown hare is in danger of dying out - but you can help by taking up hare spotting.(Features)
- Article from:
- Daily Post (Liverpool, England)
- Article date:
- January 5, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 MGN Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: By ANDREW FORGRAVE Rural Affairs Editor
ACCORDING TO Celtic folklore, the hare was a sacred animal associated with springtime and fertility. They even named the May moon after it.
The hare they worshipped, however, was not the brown version familiar to modern countryside eyes. Instead it was the blue, or mountain, hare which, in the last century, disappeared from Wales, and is now found mainly in Scotland.
By comparison the brown hare is a modern interloper. The oldest brown hare bones found in archaeological digs are only 2,000 years old: they were introduced to Britain either by the Phoenicians, who were then trading tin with ...