LEPORIDA—LEPUS TIMIDUS. 289 
I am unable to find any characters, either in the skulls or skins, by 
which LZ. “ glacialis” auct. can be distinguished from the L. “variabilis” 
auct. (= L. timidus Linn., 1766), and I find that a similar difficulty has been 
encountered by other authors. Brown says, “It is difficult (indeed almost 
impossible) to give characters whereby this species can be separated from 
the Lepus variabilis of Kurope when the former is in its summer dress ; and 
the skull presents equal difficulties. I have, however, preferred to look upon 
it as nominally distinct, though I really believe that it is only a climatic 
variety of L. variabilis, Pallas.”* — Lilljeborg also quotes Blasius as finding no 
difference of importance between L. “ glacialis” 
and L. variabilis, either in 
skins or skulls.t 
The earlier writers considered them identical, and in their accounts of 
L. variabilis usually spoke of it as inhabiting Greenland and the arctic por- 
tions of America as well as the northern parts of Europe and Asia. 
The American animal was first regarded as specifically distinct from the 
European by Dr. Leach, in 1819, when he distinguished the American form 
first as ZL. arcticus, and later inthe same work as LZ. glacialis. His specimens 
were from the shores of Baffin’s Bay In 1824, Captain Sabine (Appendix to 
Captain Parry’s First Voyage) gave a detailed enumeration of its supposed 
distinctive characters, he believing the American form to be the larger, with 
proportionally longer ears, and the incisors more curved than in the European. 
These alleged differences, however, are such as disappear in the comparison 
of large series of each, being either simply individual peculiarities or differ- 
ences due to the latitude of the locality. In accordance with the well estab- 
lished law of variation in size with locality (viz, decrease in size with 
decrease of latitude), specimens from the far north are considerably larger 
than those from more southern localities. Hence American specimens from 
the arctic regions are much larger than specimens from the Scottish High- 
lands or from Southern Scandinavia, as well as much larger than Newfound- 
land specimens. On the other hand, specimens from Lapland are as large as 
those from Greenland and the arctic shores of America, while the Scottish 
and Scandinavian specimens scarcely -differ in size from those from New- 
foundland and the shores of the Great Slave Lake. 
The actual differences between the European and American forms, 
judging from the limited material before me, seem, as already stated, to be 
* Brown (R.), Proc. Zoél. Soc. Lond., 1868, 351. t Faun. Sver. och Norges, i, 422. 
19 M 
