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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they bound along when once thoroughly 

 alarmed. A closer acquaintance with their 

 habits will reveal many points of interest, 

 and will arouse admiration for the way in 

 which they seem to overcome every adverse 

 condition of life. Unlike the cotton-tails or 

 the common rabbit of Europe, these hares 

 do not live in burrow?, but make " forms " 

 under bushes or in patches of weeds, where 

 they find protection from the weather and 

 bring foi'th their young. Where there are 

 no bushes they seek the protection of any 

 object that can shield them from the sun 

 even the shadows of the telegraph poles 

 along the railroads. Extremes of climate 

 do not appear to affect them. They feed on 

 the bark and leaves of shrubs and on herb- 

 age. They live on the grasses of the plains, 

 the bark of willows, greasewood, cactus, 

 shrubs which other animals seldom touch. 

 Sometimes it is hard to see where they can 

 get food enough ; but lack of water and of 

 green herbage serves only to reduce their 

 numbers, and rarely causes their complete 

 absence from any region. Among the 

 greasewood on the alkali flat northwest of 

 Great Salt Lake and on the cactus- covered 

 deserts of Arizona the jack rabbits are al- 

 most as fat and sleek as when feeding in 

 the alfalfa patches and vineyards of south- 

 ern California. If necessary, they can travel 

 long distances for food ; but, as they seldom 

 drink, scarcity of water causes them little 

 inconvenience, and the juicy cactus pads 

 or ordinary desert heibage furnish all the 

 moisture necessary to slake their thirst. 

 They are very destructive to gardens and 

 orchards, and, as they multiply rapidly, they 

 often become great pests, and would be in 

 danger of overrunning the country if not 

 kept down. Where new land is cultivated 

 or irrigated they seem to swarm in from the 

 surrounding country, and flourish where 

 civilized conditions prevail. The damage 

 done by them in Tulare County, California, 

 in a single year has been estimated at six 

 hundred thousand dollars, and a single coun- 

 ty in Idaho has spent more than thirty 

 thousand dollars in bounties on them. For- 

 tunately, they can be used for coursing, for 

 their skins, and for food. As they outrun 

 all but the swiftest hounds, coursing for 

 them is rare sport. The consumption of 

 them for food amounts to about six hundred 



thousand a year, and is gradually increasing. 

 Under the energetic measures that have been 

 taken against them their numbers are gradu- 

 ally diminishing. 



AYomen in Business. A London trades 

 paper has extracted from an official report 

 on bankruptcy the fact that comparatively 

 few failures occur among women engaged in 

 business. This, says the Spectator, remark- 

 ing upon the subject, we would expect to be 

 told ; " and in this case, at any rate, the sta- 

 tistics correspond with the general impres- 

 sion of the world, that women in business 

 are more careful than men less liable to 

 run into excess and to ruin themselves by too 

 adventurous a spirit." Another fact paral- 

 lel with this, but which has not found its way 

 into the statistical reports, may be accepted 

 as generally if not universally true, that 

 women in business do not accumulate large 

 fortunes. It follows, from the same reason, 

 that enterprises that bring great returns also 

 almost necessarily involve great risks ; and 

 avoidance of the risk carries with it avoid- 

 ance of the accompanying chance of making 

 a fortune. " To put the matter in a nutshell, 

 a woman conducts her business on the car- 

 dinal principle of making as few losses as 

 possible ; a rain, on the cardinal principle of 

 making as many profits as possible." 



W. F. Aiusworth. W. F. Ainsworth, who 

 died in London, November 2'7th, in his nine- 

 tieth year, was a veteran in science, the 

 recollection of whom may have passed from 

 the minds of most of the present generation. 

 He took a surgeon's degree at Edinburgh in 

 1827, and, having gone to the School of 

 Mines in Paris, made a vacation walking tour 

 in the Pyrenees and volcanic districts of 

 Auvergne. He afterward started and con- 

 ducted the Edinburgh Journal of Natural 

 and Geographical Science ; walked to Lon- 

 don in a geological study of the country, 

 and became a member of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society. In 1831 he made a study 

 of the cholera, was appointed surgeon to a 

 cholera hospital in London, and was sent, 

 when the disease broke out in Ireland, to the 

 affected towns and districts. Results of these 

 experiences and attendant adventures were 

 many papers published on cholera, and a 

 monograph, in 1834, on the Caves of Bally- 



