Had I taken the Irish rabbit, No. 3, as the standard, the following results would have been somewhat more striking.
Turning to Table 3: the first four wild rabbits have skulls of the same length, and these differ but little in capacity. The Sandon rabbit (No. 4) is interesting, as, though now wild, it is known to be descended from a domesticated breed, as is still shown by its peculiar colouring and longer body; nevertheless the skull has recovered its normal length and full capacity. The next three rabbits are wild, but of small size, and they all have skulls with slightly lessened capacities. The three Porto Santo feral rabbits (Nos. 8 to 10) offer a perplexing case; their bodies are greatly reduced in size, as in a lesser degree are their skulls in length and in actual capacity, in comparison with the skulls of wild English rabbits. But when we compare the capacities of the skull in the three Porto Santo rabbits, we observe a surprising difference, which does not stand in any relation to the slight difference in the length of their skulls, nor, as I believe, to any difference in the size of their bodies; but I neglected weighing separately their bodies. I can hardly suppose that the medullary matter of the brain in these three rabbits, living under similar conditions, can differ as much as is indicated by the proportional difference of capacity in their skulls; nor do I know whether it is possible that one brain may contain considerably more fluid than another. Hence I can throw no light on this case.
Looking to the lower half of Table 3, which gives the measurements of domesticated rabbits, we see that in all the capacity of the skull is less, but in very various degrees, than might have been anticipated according to the length of their skulls, relatively to that of the wild rabbit No. 1. In line 22 the average measurements of seven large lop-eared rabbits are given. Now the question arises, has the average capacity of the skull in these seven large rabbits increased as much as might have been expected from the greatly increased size of body. We may endeavour to answer this question in two ways: in the upper half of the Table we have measurements of the skulls of six small wild rabbits (Nos. 5 to 10), and we find that on an average the skulls are .18 of an inch shorter, and in capacity 91 grains less, than the average length and capacity of the three first wild rabbits on the list. The seven large lop-eared rabbits, on an average, have skulls 4.11 inches in length, and 1136 grains in capacity; so that these skulls have increased in length more than five times as much as the skulls of the six small wild rabbits have decreased in length; hence we might have expected that the skulls of the large lop-eared rabbits would have increased in capacity five times as much as the skulls of the six small rabbits have decreased in capacity; and this would have given an average increased capacity of 455 grains, whilst the real average increase is only 155 grains. Again, the large lop-eared rabbits have bodies of nearly the same weight and size as the common hare, but their heads are longer; consequently, if the lop-eared rabbits had been wild, it might have been expected that their skulls would have had nearly the same capacity as that of the skull of the hare. But this is far from being the case; for the average capacity of the two hare-skulls (Nos. 23, 24) is so much larger than the average capacity of the seven lop-eared skulls, that the latter would have to be increased 21 per cent to come up to the standard of the hare. (4/23. This standard is apparently considerably too low, for Dr. Crisp ('Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1861 page 86) gives 210 grains as the actual weight of the brain of a hare which weighed 7 pounds, and 125 grains as the weight of the brain of a rabbit which weighed 3 pounds 5 ounces, that is, the same weight as the rabbit No. 1 in my list. Now the contents of the skull of rabbit No. 1 in shot is in my table 972 grains; and according to Dr. Crisp's ratio of 125 to 210, the skull of the hare ought to have contained 1632 grains of shot, instead of only (in the largest hare in my table) 1455 grains.)
I have previously remarked that, if we had possessed many domestic rabbits of the same average size with the wild rabbit, it would have been easy to compare the capacity of their skulls.