Abstract: A systematic review of the Chinese cape hare, Lepus capensis Linnaeus, has been presented in this paper. The total length, the tail, the hind foot, the ear and the skull were measured. By comparing the data of European hare, Lepus europaeus pallas with those of Chinese cape hare, significant differences are shown.However, the data of Chinese cape hare are quite close to those of the type subspecies of the cape hare from Africa and those of the Tolai hare, Lepus tolai pallas. The cape hare has page priority over the Tolai hare, so that the latter does not hold good in the zoologieal nomenclature.There are all together 8 subspecies heretofore recorded in China: L. c. tolai, L. c. swimhoei, L. c. centrasiaticus, L. c. huangshuiensis, L, c. lehmanni, L. c. aurigineus and L. c. cinnamomeus. This polytypic species is widely distributed almost throughout our country except in the Southern China and Xizang Autonomous Region.According to the analysis of Fuzzy Aggregation and referring to the records of fossils, it should further be pointed out that the range of the Zhongyuan cape hare, Lepus capensis swinhoei Thomas, is probably the place of origin or distributional centre of the Chinese cape hare.