“Promoting the protection and care of rabbits, both domestic and wild,” Saturday September 28 is International Rabbit Day and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate the Leporidae than to highlight some of our favorite literature about rabbits from the BHL collection.

Pl. LX from Johnson’s household book of nature

From our Darwin’s Library collection, a virtual reconstruction of the set of the surviving works held in Charles Darwin’s personal library, “The rabbit book” outlines the history of the rabbit, its varieties at the time, and provides instructions for their care and breeding. While a relatively quick read on such topics as the difference between rabbits and hares, treating dropsy (edema), and establishing a proper rabbit “court,” the most striking aspect of the book is its drawings of rabbit varieties from Angora to Full-lop. Check out our flickr image set of “The rabbit book” to see them all together.

Previous blog posts highlight another fantastic work about the Leporidae, James E. Harting’s “The Rabbit” (1898), as featured in our 2011-Year of the Rabbit post and Laurel Byrnes’ discussion of how the young Beatrix Potter’s love of natural history and study of rabbits inspired her famous children’s work, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902).

Want to cozy up with a few more selections of Lepus literature from the BHL? See our burgeoning list of articles related rabbits and hares and a variety of works that mention the genus, and the many species of this group, via our taxonomic search functionality.

More information about International Rabbit Day can be found on the House Rabbit Society’s website http://rabbit.org/international-rabbit-day/.