Peter and friends

It is some years since I saw, in a Paris bookshop, a translated copy of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but I still enjoy recalling the French names given for the four members of the rabbit family: Flopson, Mopson, Queue-de-coton et Pierre. Cottontail is the species of rabbit which is found all over the United States; an amphibious swamp rabbit inhabits the bayous of Louisiana, and a rare marsh cottontail, which lives in Florida, has been given the name sylvilagus palustris hefneris, apparently in honour of the founder of Playboy magazine and its ‘bunnies’.

Rabbits are also commonly found in central America, as I learnt while in Mexico and Guatemala earlier this month. In the 1970s the Mexican president tried to persuade his people to breed rabbits as a source of cheap food — rather than breed like rabbits, which they continue to do — but his campaign met with little success.