16 JACK RABBITS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Oj)inioiis seem to differ as to the abuudauce of the Prairie Hare, but 

 it is certainly more common in many places than in the localities just 

 described. Dr. A. K. Fisher has seen as many as 20 together near 

 Colby, Kans., and farther north it is killed in large quantities for 

 market. A commission house in St. Paul, Minn., reports having 

 handled about 12,000 jack rabbits during the winter of 1894-95, most 

 of which came from iSTorth and South Dakota, where this is the only 

 species. Several thousand are estimated to have been killed in Cod- 

 ington County, S. Dak., alone during the same season. Certainly it 

 must be tolerably abundant in these States to be obtained in such 

 numbers. In the northern part of the Great Basin it is also abundant 

 in certain localities, especially in southern Oregon. Conqdaints have 

 recently been received from Washington that crops and young orchards 

 near Sunnyside, in the Yakima Valley, have been seriously injured, 

 while near Prescott, Wallawalla County, timber claims planted with 

 black locust trees have been ruined by the White-tailed Jack Rabbit. 



Farther south it was met with in considerable numbers by J. K. Lord, 

 during his journey from The Dalles to Walhi Walla. In describing the 

 country between the John Day and the Umatilla rivers he says:^ 

 "As w^e ride on, I noticed what I at flrst imagined must be the 

 droppings of a large flock of sheep covering the ground tliickly,just 

 as though the animals had been fohled. I had barely time to think 

 what animal conld be so abundant, when the dogs, tired as they were, 

 started two or three large hares from under the wild sage bushes. 

 We saw numbers of them, and shot several, but the flesh tasted so 

 strongly of the wild sage, on which these liaros mainly subsist, that 

 eating it was an impossibility. The Prairie Hare {Lepus campestris) 

 appears entirely confined to these sandy desert lands, being replaced 

 by the Red Hare {L. icashingtonii) in the timbered districts. 



"The fur of the Prairie Hare is long and silky, an<l exactly the color 

 of the sand and the dead leaves under the bushes where they make 

 their 'forms.' Unless they move, it is impossible to distinguish them, 

 although looking down on their backs." Put when once startled they 

 are off in an instant, and their characteristic actions at such times are 

 thus described by Dr. Coues:- 



The extraordinary agility of this aiiiiuiil, which would be inferred from inspection 

 of its lithe yet muscular and free-limbed shape, has always attracted attention. * * * 

 The first sijjjn one lias usually of a hare which has squatted low in hopes of conceal-- 

 ment, till its fears force it to lly is a great bound into the air, with lengthened 

 body and erect ears. The instant it touches the ground it is up again, with a pecul- 

 iar si>ringy jerk, more like* the rebounding oC an clastic ball than the result of 

 muscular exertion. It does not come fairly down, and gather itself for the next 

 spring, luit seems to hold its legs stillly extended, to touch only its toes, ami rebound 

 by the force of its impact. Tiie action is strikingly suggestive of the 'bucking' of 

 a mule, an alTair with which people in the West are only too familiar. With a 

 succession of these high jerky leaps the animal makes off generally in a straight 



' Naturalist in British Columbia, II, 186(5, pp. 95-96. 

 2 Bull. Essex Institute, VII (1875), 1876, pp. 83-85. 



