LEl'US SYLVATICUS. 2 I 3 



' cornered," plunge fearlessly into a swiftly (lowing river and swim 

 to the other side. 



LEPUS SYLVATICUS r.achman. 



Gray Rabbit. 



The Gray Rabbit is a more southern animal than either of the 

 species heretofore considered, and only enters the Adirondack re- 

 gion along its southern border, in Fulton,_ Saratoga, and Warren 

 Counties. 



In addition to the food which constitutes the diet of the varying 

 hare, the Gray Rabbit enters the garden and orchard, sometimes 

 committing great havoc. Robert Kennicott says: "In hunting 

 these quadrupeds, every winter, and working every summer, for 

 ten years, in a very large nursery of fruit-trees, where they were 

 numerous, I have never seen a tree from which bark had been 

 gnawed by them, though thousands were severely 'pruned,' the 

 rabbits, in deep snows, appearing to feed entirely upon the twigs 

 and buds of the young apple trees. From the larger limbs they 

 cut off the buds, of which they are fond ; and in the woods, in win- 

 ter, they can be tracked to living forest trees, recently felled, to 

 which they repair to feed upon the buds. They also feed in win- 

 ter upon the buds and young shoots of briars, sumach, hazel, thorn, 

 oak, hickory, basswood, poplar, and other shrubs and trees." * 



Its favorite haunts, according to my observation, f are pine 

 barrens, and thickets of laurel {Kalmia latifolia) and other under- 

 growth. Like the northern hare, it has regular runways which it 

 uses at all times of the year ; but unlike that species it habitually 

 takes refuofe in burrows in the earth and in hollow trees. 



* Quadrupeds of Illinois Injurious and Beneficial to the Farmer. By Robert Kennicott, 1858, 

 pp. 80-81. 



f I have found it in greater or less abundance in the Connecticut Valley in central Massachu- 

 setts ; in southern Connecticut ; in southern New York (Westchester County); in the vicinity of 

 Elizabeth, New Jersey; about Aiken, South Carolina ; and in Florida. 



