Sue MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 
was due to an epidemic. So abundant had these species been for several 
years prior to 1869 and 1870 that some of the Mormon residents were accus- 
tomed to shoot them merely to feed their swine; while so scarce had they 
become in 1871 that comparatively few of either species were to be found, 
and it was with difficulty that I could obtain any specimens. 
Richardson, in speaking of the Northern Hare (Lepus americanus), states 
that “at some periods a sort of epidemic has destroyed vast numbers of Hares 
in particular districts, and they have not recruited again until after a lapse of 
several years, during which time the Lynxes were also scarce.”* Dr. J. G. 
Cooper has also recorded a similar fact respecting the Hares of Columbia 
Plains. He says: “During our journey east of the Cascade Mountains we saw 
scarcely any Hares, and the Indians told us that some fatal disease had killed 
nearly allof them.”+ Mr. G. Gibbs, in speaking of the same region, says, under 
the head of Lepus campestris: “In 1853, we were informed by the Yakima 
Indians living north of the Columbia, that a very fatal disease had recently 
prevailed among these animals, which had cut them almost all off”{ Dr. 
Cooper, some years later, again refers to the same subject as follows: “Their 
numbers [referring to L. “townsendi” = L. campestris! seem never to have 
increased much north of the Columbia and Snake Rivers since the epidemic 
(small-pox!) destroyed them several years since, but south of those rivers 
they became common.” He adds, however: “It is a question whether an 
epidemic really made them scarce northward, or whether the prevalence of 
uncommonly deep snow did not enable the Indians to kill more of them, as 
with Deer and Antelopes.”§ According to the testimony of the Indians them- 
selves, however, they were destroyed by an epidemic. 
Similar epidemics are also well known to affect the Deer and Pronghorns. 
As I have stated elsewhere,|| a fatal epidemic raged among the Pronghorns 
(Antilocapra americana) during the summer of 1873 over nearly the whole 
area between the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, destroying apparently 
three-fourths to nine-tenths of them, over which extensive region their 
decaying carcasses were abundant during September of that year. At this 
time, very few were seen living, where a few months before numbers were 
toy) 
almost constantly within view. 
* Fauna Bor.-Amer., vol. i, p. 218. » 
+ P. R. R. Reports, vol. xii, pt. ii, p. 87. 
{ P. R. R. Reports, vol. xii, pt. ii, p. 131. 
§ American Naturalist, vol. ii, p. 536. 
|| Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. xvii, p. 40, 
