MAMMALIA—AMERICAN HARE. 257 
thirty-one days, and will produce five, six, and sometimes seven or eight at 
a birth. Like the doe-hare, she has a double matrix, and, of consequence, 
can have in her womb, at the same time, two separate litters. It appears, 
however, that superfmtations are less frequent in this species than in that 
of the hare. 
A few days before they bring forth, they dig a fresh burrow, not in a right 
line, but in a crooked direction, at the bottom of which they make an exca- 
vation; after which they tear a quantity of hair from their bellies, and 
make a kin] of bed for the use of their little ones. For the first two days 
they never quit them; they never stir abroad, unless forced to do so from 
necessity, and return as soon as ever they have taken their nourishment. 
At this season, they eat much, and very quick ; and thus they tend and 
suckle their young for more than six weeks. Tull then, the buck does 
not know them, nor does he enter the burrow which the doe has dug. 
Often, even when she quits it and leaves her little ones behind, she stops 
up the entry to it with earth, wet with her urine; but when they begin to 
venture to the edge of the hole, and to eat groundsel and other herbs, which 
the doe picks out for them, the buck begins to know them, to take them 
between his paws, to endeavor to give a gloss to their hair, to lick their 
eyes; and all of them, in succession, partake equally of his cares. 
* Though rabbits are found in America, they are not natives of it, but are 
descended from those which have been brought from Europe. The animal 
vulgarly called rabbit in this country, is the American hare, which we shall 
next describe. 
THE AMERICAN HARE. 

= =i = = 
Tuts animal is found throughout this country, to as far north as the 
vicinity of Carlton House, in the Hudson’s Bay country. According to the 
statement of Hearne, “‘they are not plentiful in the eastern parts of the 
northern Indian country, not even in those parts that are situated among 
} Lepus Americanus, GMEL. 
33 
