XXIV. 



WHITE RABBITS AND WHITE HARES. 



WALKING out in the undercliff by Tom Fowler's cot- 

 tage this afternoon, I have just come across a very un- 

 usual sight for an English warren. A snow-white wild 

 rabbit has started this moment, almost from under my 

 feet, and made straight for his burrow on the neighbor- 

 ing hillside. What is stranger still, he was a full-grown 

 buck, apparently ; and this is peculiar, because a rabbit 

 of such a conspicuous color is almost sure to get picked 

 off early in his life by prowling owls or passing badgers. 

 Indeed, that is just why wild rabbits as a rule possess 

 their well-known grayish-brown color. Such a color 

 harmonizes well with the dry bracken and low stubble 

 among which they feed ; and it thus renders the animals 

 as little conspicuous as possible to their numerous ene- 

 mies, especially in the dusk of evening, which is their 

 proper feeding time. Wild rabbits tend to vary in color 

 a little, just as tame ones do, though to a less degree ; 

 but the variations are dangerous to the creatures, because 

 they betray them more readily to their keen-eyed foes. 

 It is only where snow abounds that white rabbits or 

 white hares are likely to possess any advantage ; and 

 under such circumstances we do actually find a white 

 species in our own island. 



On the tops of the higher Scotch hills, in fact, there 

 still linger on among the colder districts a few isolated 

 colonies of a very interesting little rodent, known lyy a 

 large and puzzling array of aliases as the white hare, 



