Varying Hare 



or in the woods near by, and I am convinced that purely by chance 

 we had intercepted the little band in its march southward and 

 that those killed in this and the neighbouring towns that season 

 where none had been seen for years, were wanderers from some- 

 where farther north, impelled southward by the same unreasoning 

 impulse that is said once in every seven or eight years to drive 

 the lemmings southward from the Arctic Ocean, and which, to a 

 lesser degree appears to affect most of the smaller fur-clad animals 

 of the North. 



Only the winter before I had tramped through these same woods 

 after almost every tracking snow, and I am able to say positively that 

 the gray rabbit was the only species to be found there, and 

 three years later it was the same again; the only one that has visited 

 these woods since then, as far as I can learn, being a solitary 

 individual that the next winter passed within half a mile of the house 

 where I write, going due southeast without swerving more than a 

 few rods from a direct course at any time and crossing open fields 

 and meadows indifferently. 



I followed its tracks closely for nearly two miles and saw 

 no evidence of its having stopped to eat or rest at any time. 

 Finally it struck off across a wind-swept field where the drifting snow 

 wholly obliterated its footprints, and I have often wondered what 

 eventually became of the solitary wanderer hopping away alone 

 towards the sea whose roar was already distinctly audible only 

 a few miles away. 



From what I can learn I should say that the border land between 

 the countries of the white rabbit and the gray is somewhere between 

 forty and fifty miles to the north of this southeastern corner of New 

 Hampshire; beyond that I have been unable as yet to find the gray 

 rabbits, though for the first thirty miles they are as abundant as they 

 are here, and further west their range is said to extend well up into 

 Canada. 



Mr. P. C. True writing from Pittsfield, New Hampshire, under 

 date of March ist 1899, says: " I have consulted a number of veteran 

 fox hunters here and gathered what information I could on the 

 subject. 



"The white rabbits, or jacks, as they are called here, have 

 almost disappeared; what few are left are found only in the big 

 forests. I am told that the cause of the departure is that the conies 

 devour their young; conies are very numerous as were jacks previous 



85 



