n 



324 



MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 





I'll li-tf^i'i 



Uirougli vnr. hairdi, it extends througliout the higlier parts of the Rocky 

 Mountains soutli, at least to Cantonment Burgwyn, New Mexico; to the 

 eastward of tiic Missouri River, as var. virginianus, it occurs in Minnesota, 

 and thence eastward tliroughout tlie northern parts at least of nearly all the 

 northern tier of States, and in the Alleghanies southward, at least to Vir- 

 ginia, and on the Atlantic coast to Connecticut. Its limit in the Eastern 

 States hence nearly coincides with that of the Alleghanian fauna. To the 

 northward, it ranges to the limit of trees, extending even to the very borders 

 of tlie Arctic Barren Grounds. 



The range of the several varieties is not so easily indicated. Var. ame- 

 ricanus seems to remain well-defined as that type southward to New Bruns- 

 wick and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, and as far as the Red River 

 Settlements in the interior. Var. Jrtzjv/i, occupying the higher parts of the Rocky' 

 Mountains, separates tlie two southern forms, virginianus and .washingtoni, 

 and doubtless extends a long way northward into the habitat of var. ameri- 

 canus. Var. americanus is the form received from Southern Alaska, but its 

 southern limit on the Pacific coast is not as yet known. Var. washingtoni, 

 however, has been received from as high as about latitude 55°. So far as 

 our present knowledge goes, we may define the habitat of var. virginianus as 

 occupying the Atlantic coast-region from Nova Scotia to Connecticut; the 

 whole of the higher parts of the Apalachian Highlands as far south as 

 Virginia, and probably to North Carolina; in the interior, the northern half 

 of the northern tier of States, and the southern half of the Canadas, west- 

 ward to the highlands bordering the northern shore of Lake Superior, where 

 here and in Northern Minnesota it doubtless gradually merges into variety 

 americanus. 



Synonymy. — ^We find allusions to the Lepus americanus auct. in the 

 writings of several of the early authors, among whom is Kalm, who refers 

 to it briefly in his Travels (vol. iii, p. 59, English ed.), and supposed it to be 

 identical with the Varying Hare of Europe. The first specimens reached 

 England in 1771, and were described in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. 

 Ixii, p. 4) by Daines Barrington in 1772 under the name of the "Hudson's 

 Bay Quadruped". In the same volume, it is again more fully described by 

 J. R. Forster, who gives also some account of its habits, but, in so doing, 

 quotes Kalm's reference to quite a different species (the L. sylvaticus Bach.) 

 inhabiting New Jersey. Pennant, in his History of Quadrupeds (in 1784), 



