Vaiying Hare 



at right angles. The latter proved to be the main highway with 

 several branch roads similar to the first. 



But I was unable to catch sight of any of the members of the com- 

 munity which, judging from the tracks, must have numbered several 

 dozen at least, and as the snow was again falling rapidly and obliter- 

 ating the maze of tracks 1 was endeavouring to unravel, I was 

 obliged to give it up for the time being. 



Several times in the course of the next month 1 visited those 

 woods, sometimes finding the tracks I was in search of and sometimes 

 not, for the colony was apparently an unsettled and roving one and 

 I seldom found it established twice in the same place, though at times 

 it must have stopped for several days or even weeks before starting 

 off in search of new feeding grounds and seldom moving any great 

 distance each time. I failed as at first, however, to see the hares 

 themselves, though a dog would undoubtedly have driven them into 

 sight for me had 1 chosen to take one along. 



In March, with a companion, I was skirting the western border 

 of the swamp and while still half a mile or more to the south of where 

 1 had seen any of their tracks, a white rabbit started out of the bushes 

 only a few yards away and after creeping rather slowly along under 

 cover of the ground laurel for a little distance, broke all at once into a 

 series of tremendous bounds that soon carried it out of sight among 

 the trees. 



The snow was frozen hard, with patches of bare ground on the 

 southern slope, so that tracking was out of the question. We tramped 

 about there for some time and saw white rabbits running before us in 

 four or five different instances, and though we may have seen the 

 same rabbit twice, there were certainly more than one, and I believe 

 three or four that we saw. 



At last on the very edge of the swamp, where the dry and frozen 

 swamp-gaass and bushes stood in clumps between the ice-bound 

 alders and maples, a big white fellow sprang out of the thick tussock 

 and in attemping to dash away over the ice got fairly caught between 

 the close-growing stems of a bunch of red willows and was easily 

 secured. 



it proved to be a large male whose smooth white fur showed but 

 little sign of the spring shedding, only a spot here and there that 

 hardly showed at all when the animal was in motion. 



A few days later there was no sign of them to be found at that place 



84 



