290 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.86 



One of these cottontails was collected by Perrygo and Lingebach 

 at the edge of a hemlock bog behmd the camp at Shady Valley. At 

 an elevation of 2,700 feet on the west slope of Low Gap, 4^2 miles 

 southeast of Cosby, one was shot in a rhododendron thicket in hem- 

 lock woods. A cottontail with short ears, but with pelage coloration 

 and skull similar to that of malhtms, was caught at an elevation of 

 6,300 feet on Koan Mountain in a large-size Schuyler trap set by 

 Perrygo and Schaefer in a rhododendron thiclvet in a balsam-fir 

 forest. Cottontails were reported as numerous in the open woods 

 and broorasedge fields near Greenbrier, Sevier County, and 14 were 

 collected by Komarek and Komarek (1938, p. 160). 



Writing in 1896, Khoads (p. 182) stated that this cottontail was 

 so abundant in the woods and thickets bordering the canebrakes along 

 the Mississippi River that it had almost become a nuisance. Near 

 Brownsville, Haywood County, B. C. Miles wrote Rhoads that cotton- 

 tails had doubled in numbers during the preceding 20 years and that 

 he could recall parties of hunters that had killed 100 in a single day's 

 hunt during February 1895. In the vicinity of Hickory Withe, Ar- 

 lington, Eads, and Hornbeak, in the western part of the State, these 

 cottontails were taken in broomsodge and brier patches on abandoned 

 fields. At Crab Orchard cottontails were found in laurel thickets in 

 deciduous woods. One cottontail was collected north of Indian 

 Mound in dense deciduous woods with relatively little underbrush. 

 Bangs (1894, p. 409) records three specimens from Trenton, Gibson 

 County. Specimens from Samburg, Obion County, and Raleigh, 

 Shelby County, are listed by Rhoads (1896, p. 183). * 



Nelson (1909, pp. 174-176) referred specimens taken at Arling- 

 ton, Big Sandy, and Danville during June 1892 to S. f. alacer. All 

 these have a much richer suffusion of rusty reddish over the entire 

 upper parts, the obliteration of the grayish rump patch, and decidedly 

 rusty legs. Nevertheless, all the cottontails in the collection received 

 since 1900 have a somewhat different general coloration, being much 

 lighter and more grayish buff. Howell (1921, p. 70), on the basis 

 of more abundant material than that at the disposal of Nelson, as- 

 signed the form ranging through the South Atlantic States to S. f. 

 'iimllurus and remarked that "they agree very closely with this race 

 in color and differ only in having slightly smaller audital bullae.'^ 

 The series of cottontails from Tennessee is quite unsatisfactory, inas- 

 much as relatively few of the specimens have the fresh fall pelage. 

 It is likely that a more adequate series will show that cottontails 

 from the eastern mountainous portion of the State should be re- 

 ferred to mallurus and that those occurring in middle and western 

 Tennessee are either meamsi or intermediates between maHunis and 

 mearnsi. 



