The particular uses of the rabbit are nearly the same as those of the hare (73). The _fur_ is a principal substance employed in the composition of hats; and such parts of it as are unfit for this purpose may advantageously be adopted for the stuffing of beds and bolsters. Rabbits' skins are also sometimes used as a cheap and warm-trimming for female dress; and the _skins_ themselves, after the hair has been stripped from them, are boiled down, and made into size or glue. The _flesh_, though, like that of the hare, forbidden to the Jews and Mahometans, is a very delicate and palatable food. We are informed by Pliny, the Roman naturalist, that the ancients had a favourite dish which was made of sucking leverets or rabbits unpaunched. The modes of ascertaining the quality of rabbits as food are nearly the same as those which have been mentioned respecting the hare.
It is customary, in most warrens, to use ferrets (56) in the catching of these animals. The ferrets are muzzled and put into the burrows; and, by pursuing the rabbits under ground, they alarm and drive them into nets that are placed over the outlets, in open and extensive grounds other modes are adopted. These, as we are informed by Mr. Daniel, in his work on Rural Sports, are by implements called fold-nets, spring-nets, and a kind of trap called tipes. The _fold-nets_ are set, about midnight, between the burrows and the feeding grounds; the rabbits being driven into them with dogs, and kept enclosed in the folds till morning. The _spring-net_ is generally laid round a haystack, or some other object of inducement for rabbits to collect in numbers. The _tipe_ consists of a large pit or cistern, covered with a floor. This has, near its centre, a small trap-door nicely balanced, into which the rabbits are led by a narrow road or _meuse_. It was customary formerly to set this kind of trap near a hay-stack; but, since turnips are now grown as food for these animals in an enclosure in the interior of the warren, it is placed within the wall of this enclosure. For a night or two the rabbits are suffered to go through the meuse and over the trap, that they may be familiarized to the place where the turnips are grown. After that the trap-door is unbarred, and immense numbers fall in. On emptying the cistern, the fat rabbits are selected and killed, and the others are turned out upon the turnips to improve. Five or six hundred couples have not unfrequently been taken in one night by this contrivance; and once, in the Driffield warrens, as many as fifteen hundred couples were caught.