The Cottontail 
Their food seems to be of much the same general character 
as that of the white rabbit though perhaps a little more varied, 
including fruit and all kinds of garden vegetables when convenient, 
though the damage done in this way is hardly worth consider- 
ing, in which respect it sets an example which the Old World 
rabbit might profit by. 
Like the other members of its race it often endeavours to 
escape notice by crouching motionless wherever it may happen 
to be, often allowing itself to be all but taken before it will 
move, and at such times no amount of being stared at will 
frighten it or put it out of countenance There it will sit per- 
fectly motionless except for the trembling of its whiskers and 
the motion of its breathing until you seem to be just on the 
point of grasping it, when it quietly slips from beneath your 
hands and races away. 
| have seen one sitting in plain sight on the snow among 
the scattered sumachs not ten yards from a path along which 
loads of hay were being hauled from the salt marsh to the upland. 
Five or six teams must have passed it, some of them followed 
by dogs, and still it sat there undisturbed in the sunlight, ap- 
parently absorbed in its own thoughts. 
The young ones, four or five inches long, are often met 
with in summer all alone beneath the ferns and brambles and 
very serious and reserved little chaps they are, too, with their 
great black eyes and absurd looking triangular mouths forever in 
motion, as if repeating over and over to themselves some lesson 
which they fear they may forget. 
Varieties of the Cottontail 
1. Common or Southern Cottontail. Lepus floridanus mallurus 
(Thomas). Range and description as above. 
2. Florida Cottontail. Lepus floridanus Allen. Darker all over, 
with no conspicuous black edgings to the ears nor black 
spot between them. 
Range. Southern Florida north to Micco. 
3. Northern Cottontail. Lepus floridanus transitionalis (Bangs). 
More richly coloured than the southern cottontail, with 
many long black hairs scattered over the back, black bor- 
ders to ears and spot between them very distinct. 
Range. Alleghany Mountains and northward east of the 
Hudson to southern Vermont and New Hampshire. To 
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