WHERE SPRING COMES LATE 17 



has a peculiar habit of putting his left hind foot 

 ahead for a few hops, and then changing off by 

 promoting his right foot to that position. When 

 he runs hard, his feet are spread out very much 

 in a straight line. 



How interesting to follow the prints about, 

 and read the story of how these little chaps 

 spend the night. Their likes and dislikes of 

 food, their little frights, sometimes even their 

 deaths, stand revealed plainly to one who takes 

 time and pains to read. It is interesting to col- 

 lect samples of the cuttings of the smaller hare. 

 Oak, cherry, birch, willow, bitter poplar, and 

 prickly rose twigs all go into his little pulp mill, 

 in large quantities. In his lumbering opera- 

 tions, he reaches up, cuts off the twig with a clean 

 bite, and then munches it down endwise. He 

 has an iron jaw; his chisel-teeth, driven by his 

 bulging jaw muscles, can be sent through frozen 

 oak scrub saplings, thicker than a lead-pencil, 

 with a clean, effortless bite. Strange that a 

 creature armed with so terrible a bite has never 

 learned to defend himself by using his chisel. 



The tracks of the larger hare lead back and 

 forth on the more open places, and do not enter 

 the scrub. He is the most cold-proof creature 



