Varying Hare 
from brown to white occurs in the autumn and for a short time the 
animal is somewhat ‘mottled.’ Then in March as the weather gets 
warmer the snow gradually disappears from the woods, the fur 
of the Northern hare, probably by reason of the wearing away of the 
tips and the shedding of the long hairs gets more and more mottled 
with brown, the change in most cases that have come under my 
notice commencing at the back of the neck, on the feet and the under 
surface of the body, and in an astonishingly short time the dark 
summer coat is fairly resumed. Although belated snowstorms must 
often give them occasion to regret the loss of their winter coats, 
taking one year and another, the change seems to be wonderfully 
well timed, and at most they are really no worse off than those other 
inhabitants of the woods that wear their dark coats throughout the 
winter. 
When the white people first made their homes in this part of the 
country they found only these big, long-legged Northern hares 
dwelling in the uncleared forest, never a very numerous race in 
all probability in spite of the advantages of tremendous swiftness and 
a coat which copied the colour of their surroundings at all times 
of the year. 
Preyed upon by Indians, wolves and lynxes and the various 
members of the weasel tribe, which have since been exterminated, or 
nearly so, because of the beauty of their fur, as well as their numer- 
ous enemies which still survive in more or less reduced numbers, the 
coming of the white man must have proved rather an advantage than 
an added danger to this long suffering, thin-skinned defenceless race 
of animals, and it seems probable that they did increase in numbers to 
a certain extent for the first two hundred years or so. As recently as 
fifty years ago they were still common and apparently the only species 
in Southern New Hampshire, but somewhere about that time the little 
gray rabbit or cotton-tail made its appearance; no one could tell from 
whence, though it seems generally to have received the title of cony 
at first to distinguish it from the other which had always been called 
rabbit, and though hardly one half as large and much shorter of foot 
and even more timid and helpless, it now became evident that the 
larger species was disappearing as the smaller increased in numbers. 
I am told that at one time, something like thirty years ago, there 
were no white rabbits to be found within miles of this place. Then 
they appeared and even seemed to slightly increase in numbers for a 
few years only to vanish as before, and it has been that way ever 
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