HARE, FRANCIS, D.D., successively Dean of Worcester, Dean of St Paul's, Bishop of St. Asaph, and Bishop of Chichester. The deanery of St. PauPs he held with each of his episcopal appointments to his death in 174o. He was at one tune a friend of Dr. Bentley, who dedicated to him, in i713, his celebrated Remarks On the .Essay on Freethinking, in acknowledgment of which Hare published his Letter entitled A Clergyman's thanks to Phileleu therus Lipsiensis for his Remarks, etc.' Before his elevation to the see of St. Asaph, Dr. Hare took part against Hoadley in the Bangorian con troversy ; amongst hi9 published works was a ser mon on this subject—' Concio ad Synodum,' on Titus ii. 8. Bishop Hare was the author of seve ral political tracts, an edition of Terence, and a volume of sermons ; but the only work which en titles him to a place in this Cyclopxdia of Biblical Literature' vvas his Book of Psalms in the Hebrew, put into the original poetical metre, published in 1736. We learn (says Bishop Jebb, Sacred Lite. mture, p. 12) from George Psalmanazar's memoirs_ that his lordship printed but 560 copies of his Hebrew Psalter, one-half of which he presented to his learned friends at home and abroad—the re maining copies sold but slackly, and the work was never separately republished.* Although this in genious treatise was so soon supeneded by Bishop Lowth's metrical system, it was unquestionably the first publication of any note that had appeared in England on the subject of Hebrew metre. The learned author's negative merits were not incon siderable ; he saw with clearness and exposed with convincing arguments the faults of his predecessors. Yet he fell into the self-same error which he had censured in Gomarus, of attributing to Hebrew poetry a closer ajinity to Greek metre than it really possesses ; nor was he exempt from the more serious fault which he justly imputed to Meibomius of wantonly altering and interpolating, without any adequate authority, the Hebrew text of the Psal mist. In his metrical theory he considered the ac cents of the syllables as one of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry ; and although he did not discover alcaics and sapphics in the Psalms of David, he did suppose that they were replete with iambics and trochaics. Whatever progress may yet be made in discovering the laws of Hebrew poetry, it may safely be assumed that all attempts like Bishop Hare's to recover the Hebrew system of metre by means of Greek and Latin exarnoles must be utterly futile. Our Bishop's name will be kept in remembrance in connection with this sub, ect by the confutations of Dr. Lowth. The longer of these was written in English in a letter to Dr. Thomas Edwards, whose defence of Hare was hard'y more than a virulent attack on Lowth ; while the shorter one is appended to the Prcelectiones under the title of Metricx Harianx brevis confutatio.' In the best Oxford edition of Lowth's great AVOIk there is reprinted a valuable review of Bishop Hare's themy by the learned German, Christian 1,1)..ise, which was ori ginally published in 1746 under the title of Sys tema Psalmorum Metricum a celeberrimo Anglo Francisco Hare nuper adornatum delineat Chris tianus Weisius.' There are briefer notices of Hare's systeni in Bishop Jebb's Sacrea' Literature, pp. 12 16, and Canon Roger's Book of Psalms in Hebrew, vol. i. pp. 16-19. Bishop Hare was grandfather of the late Archdeacon Hare and his brother, the well-known authors of Guesses at Truth.—P. H.
HARE (nZriN arnebeth ; Arab. arneb) occurs in Lev. xi. 6, and Dent. xiv. 7, and, in both in stances, the animal is prohibited from being used as food, because, although it chews the cud, it has not the hoof divided. But the hare belongs to an order of mammals totally distinct from the rumin antia which are all, without exception, bisulca, the camel's hoof alone offering a partial modification.
They have all four stomachs ; incisor teeth, with again some slight modification in the camel, solely in the lower jaw ; molars made for grinding, and the lower jawbone articulated, so as to admit of the circular action required for that purpose, when the food, already swallowed, is forced up to be thoroughly triturated. All these characters and faculties are wanting in the hare„ which belongs to the order rodentia ; for, in common with perr cupines, squirrels, beavers, and rats, it has incisor teeth above and below, set like chisels, lend calcu lated for gnawing, cutting, and nibbling. The stomach of rodents is single, and the motion of the mouth, excepting when they masticate some small portion of fobd reserved in the hollow of the cheek, is more that of the lips ; when in a state of repose the animals are engaged in working the incisor teeth upon each other. This practice is a neces sary condition of existence, for the friction keeps them fit for the purpose of nibbling, and prevents their growing beyond a proper length. It is a provision of nature in the whole order of rodents ; and, if by any accident the four cutting teeth be rendered inefficient by not closing upon each other at the exact line of contact, they grow rapidly beyond serviceable use, exceed the opening of the mouth, and impede feeding till the animal perishes from want. As hares do not subsist on hard sub stances, like most of the genera of the order, but on tender shoots and grasses, they have more cause, and therefore a more constant craving, to abrade their teeth ; and this they do in a manner which, combined with the slight trituration of the occasional contents of the cheeks, even modern writers, not zoologists, have mistaken for real rumination. In the German versions, the expres sion wiederkauen, to chew again,' is much more correct than the English phrase, to chew the cud,' because this last implies a faculty which re-chewing does not, and which the hare does not possess.
Physiological investigation having fully detei. mined these questions, it follows that both with regard to the Shaphan and the Hare we should un. derstand the original in the above passages, rendered chewing the cud,' as merely implying a second mastication, more or less complete, and not neces sarily that faculty of true ruminants, which de rives its name from a power to draw up aliment, after deglutition, when worked into a ball, from the first stomach into the mouth, and there to sub mit it to a second grinding process. The act of chewing the cud' and re-chewing' being con. sidered identical by the Hebrews, the sacred law giver, not being occupied with the docti-ines of science, no doubt used the expression in the sense in which it was then understood. It may be added, that a similar opinion, and consequent rejection of the hare as food, pervaded many nations of an tiquity, who derived their origin, or their doctrines, from a Semitic source ; and that among others it existed among the British Celtze, probably even before they had any intercourse with Phoenician merchants.
There are two distinct species of hare in Syria, one, Lepus Syriacus, or Syrian hare, nearly equal in size to the common European, having the fur ochry buff, and Lepus Sinaiticus, or hare of the desert, smaller and brownish. They reside in the localities indicated by their trivial names, and are distinguished from the common hare, by a greater length of ears, and a black tail with white fringe. There is found in Egypt, and higher up the Nile, a third species, represented in the outline paintings on ancient monuments, but not coloured with that delicacy of tint required for distinguishing it from the others, excepting that it appears to be marked with the black speckles which characterise the existing species.—C. H. S.