370 MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMENICAN RODENTIA. 
Lepus cuniculus, and, as Waterhouse observes, is from the Dutch Robbeken. 
The species was also often anciently called Cony in England, and is generally 
known by some analogous word in other European countries, the Italians 
calling it Coniglio; the Spaniards, Conejo; the Welch, Cwningen; the Danes 
and Swedes, AKaning, etc., all traceable, as etymologists tell us, to the Latin 
word cuniculus. Iabbit is as distinctively a specific name as is its Latin 
equivalent cunicudus in scientific nomenclature, or as Jobin is in America for 
the designation of a particular kind of Thrush. Hence Rabbit is properly 
applicable to the Lepus cuniculus, and to no other species of the Hare family. 
Flare, on the contrary, is as much a generic or family name as is either 
Mouse, Squirrel, Bat, Hawk, or Thrush, and may be properly applied to any 
species of the family. In England, when used without a qualifying word, 
it refers to the “Common Hare”, or Lepus europeus (= timidus of authors 
generally), and its unmodified equivalent is similarly used in other Kuro- 
pean countries. The analogues of Hare, as Heas of the Dutch, Hase of 
the Germans, Hare of the Danes and Swedes, ete. are also similarly 
used for the designation of any species of the Hare family, to which are 
added qualifying words to indicate particular species, as in English we speak 
of the Varying Ilare, the Polar Hare, the Mediterranean or Sardinian Hare, 
Prairie Hare, etc.* 
It hence follows that, strictly speaking, the term Rabbit is not applicable 
to any species of American Hare; the term Hare, with some qualifying word, 
as Marsh Hare, Californian Hare, ete., being technically the only admissible 
appellative for our indigenous species. Practically, however, the terms 
Hare and Rabbit in this country have become interchangeable, either desig- 
nation being used for any of the species according to individual predilection, 
though generally, perhaps, there is a tendency to restrict the name Hare to 
the larger species. Hence the terms Rabbit and Hare have, in the United 
States at least, ceased to become distinctive of any specific diversity or peculi- 
arities of habit or structure. The Rabbit proper, or the Lepus cuniculus, differs 
from most other species of the family in its habit of burrowing, and from 
most of the other Old World species in the shortness of its hind legs. Many 
of our American species, however, resort more or less habitually to the 
deserted burrows of other animals for protection, either from their enemies 
* Waterhouse, in his excellent work on the Rodentia, sernpulously applies the term Hare to every 
species of the Hare family, except L. cuniculus, which he calls ‘the Rabbit or Cony”, the latter name 
being the one anciently in general use for this species. 
