[30]
The head is light, small, drooping, narrow at the front; the ears are upright;1 the neck is thin, round, not stiff, and fairly long; the shoulder-blades are straight and free at the top; the fore-legs are agile and close together; the chest is not broad; the ribs are light and symmetrical; the loins are circular; the rump is fleshy; the flanks are soft and fairly spongy; the hips are round, well filled out, and the right distance apart at the top; the thighs are small and firm, muscular on the outside and not puffy on the inside; the shanks are long and firm; the fore-feet are extremely pliant and narrow and straight and the hind-feet hard and broad; and all four are indifferent to rough ground; the hind-legs are much longer than the fore-legs, and slightly bent outwards; the coat is short and light.
1 “The ears are upright” is not in the MSS., and is inserted from Pollux. As our author is enumerating those characteristics of the hare that make for speed, it is not quite certain that the words are his, but see 33.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. E. C. Marchant, G. W. Bowersock, tr. Constitution of the Athenians. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1925.
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