192 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 



by the commencement of rough weather that winter is at 

 hand, have congregated together in some favourite swamp 

 to prepare for their departure. In the latter end of 

 August and the beginning of September the snipe falls 

 an easy victim to the pot-hunter, as the birds are then 

 very tame. I have often seen them walking about the 

 mud at the edge of creeks and milldams ; when put up at 

 this season they make a very short flight and then pitch 

 again. Snipe remain later than cock. I shot a couple of 

 these birds as late as December 20. 



Owing to the diminished numbers of the fur-bearing 

 animals that prey upon them, rabbits, or rather hares 

 (Lepus Americanus), are very plentiful. Their favourite 

 resort is the thick second growth of young forest which 

 abounds with tender twigs of maple, moosewood, birch, 

 willow, alder, &c., which supply them with browse. In 

 summer they eat grass, and at that season they resemble 

 the English rabbit in colour ; in winter they turn white. 

 The farther north they are found, the purer the white. 

 Tracking a rabbit in Gaspe, after a fresh fall of snow, I 

 have come to the end of the tracks and been unable for a 

 while to see anything of the animal, until at last I have 

 made out a single spot of colour amid the pure white 

 surface the unwinking eye of my little friend Lepus A., 

 who was squatted motionless in the soft snow, relying 

 upon his colour to escape detection. The change of 

 colour commences about November 1, and at Christmas 

 they are pure white. In other words, the change of 

 colour exactly coincides with the fall of the snow. Were 

 it not for the disguise kindly lent them by nature, they 

 would fall an easy victim in winter to the loup-cervier, the 



