290 MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 
by no means very tangible, consisting mainly in slight differences in the color 
of the summer pelage, the American form being rather darker and less 
fulvous. The ears also appear to be rather longer. The specimens before 
me are too few to render it safe to predicate that these differences are con- 
stant and distinctive; but as they accord with the general law of the darker 
tints of the closely-allied American representatives of European forms, the 
L. “ glacialis” of authors may be provisionally regarded as a varietal form of 
L. timidus.* 
As is the case in the Ermines and other animals that assume a white 
livery in winter, the change is more complete in the extreme northern repre- 
sentatives of the species than in the extreme southern ones. In Newfound- 
land, Ireland,t the Scottish Highlands, and in Southern Scandinavia, the 
change is often incomplete. Although authors almost universally describe 
the winter pelage as white to the base, it is well known that the Lepus hiber- 
nicus Bell was based on specimens from Ireland that remained brown in 
winter, and Nilsson’s variety canescens (L. variabilis var. canescens Nilss.) of 
Sweden was based merely on southern specimens, in which the change to 
white in winter is only partial. In the Scottish and Scandinavian specimens 
before me, I observe the following stages of gradation in respect to the 
winter pelage. In only one or two is the whiteness of the under fur of that 
snowy purity seen in the specimens from Greenland, Labrador, and 
Arctic America, there being in nearly all a faint shade of brown. In some, 
it is so pale as to be scarcely appreciable; in others, quite strong. In the 
latter, a few black hairs are intermixed in the dorsal surface, which in some 
cases form quite a strongly-marked grayish area on the middle of the back. 
The specimens alluded to above vary as follows :— 
No. 1737 (Coll. M. C. Z.), Sweden—Pelage pure white to its base; 
front of ears pale grayish-brown. ' 
No. 1776 (M. C. Z.), Sweden—White, with a slight mixture of long 
black hairs on the back, and a faint brownish tinge below the surface; front 
of ears reddish-brown. 
No. 1777 (M. C. Z.), Sweden —A few black hairs in the dorsal surface, 
most numerous on the middle of the back, where they form a large grayish 
* As shown by the above-cited synonyims, the name timidus of Linnzeus has priority over variabilis 
of Pallas. 
t“ The Irish Hare only occasionally becomes white in winter”.—(WATERHOUSE, Nat. Hist. Mam., 
ii, 54.) 
