300 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



By the end of October, 1897, the snow-shoe rabbits 

 had all duly turned white, according to immemorial 

 precedent ; but the warm weather and unexpected 

 melting of the snow during the following month must 

 have rendered their white winter dress an added source 

 of danger to them instead of a protection, and had 

 there been more predatory animals and birds about, 

 the species would doubtless have suffered heavily dur- 

 ing that season. 



I met with three species of hares in Wyoming : 

 the mountain species I have just described, the 

 large prairie hare, or jack rabbit, as it is called (Lepus 

 campestris), and a small species about the size of a 

 rabbit, which is, I think, the wood hare (Lepus syl- 

 vaticus)^ The range of the latter overlaps the ranges 

 of the other two, as it is not only found everywhere 

 in the valleys and on the side-hills of the lower spurs 

 of the Rocky Mountains, where neither the prairie 

 hare nor the mountain species are to be met with, but 

 is common far out on the plains of the Bighorn Basin, 

 where the prairie hare is also numerous, and in winter, 

 at any rate, also lives in the lowest valleys, to which 

 the mountain hare descends. Both the prairie hare 

 and the mountain hare turn snow-white in winter, but 

 the little wood hare never changes colour, though one 

 would imagine that protective colouring would be as 

 necessary for it as for its larger congeners. Perhaps it 

 was originally a southern species, evolved in countries 



1 Local name, " cotton-tail." 



