Watership Down Hazel's sensitivity to Fiver with the "far more mechanical" attitude of the bucks towards the does portrayed as "little more than passive baby-factories". In the "New York Times Book Review" essay "Male Chauvinist Rabbits", Selma G. Lanes observed that the does are only "instruments of reproduction" to prevent the achievement of reaching "Watership Down" from "becoming a hollow victory". Lanes argued that this view of female rabbits came from Adams rather than his source text, Ronald Lockley's "The Private Life of the Rabbit" in which the rabbit world is matriarchal, and new warrens are initiated by dissatisfied young females. In
Watership Down, Hampshire lies at the south-eastern edge of the North Wessex Downs Area of Natural Beauty. Other nearby features include Ladle Hill, on Great Litchfield Down, immediately to the west. Part of the hill is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, first notified in 1978. The hill has a partially completed Iron Age hill fort on its summit, and the surrounding area is rich in Iron Age tumuli, enclosures, lynchets and field systems. Further to the west lies Beacon Hill. Watership Down is accessible via the large village of Kingsclere. Watership Down, Hampshire Watership Down is a hill, or down, at