48 GILPIN — ON THE MAMMALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



the sepia brown changing into rusty. The variations in the 

 intensity of this colour in different individuals, are only numbered 

 by the individuals themselves. Some even in mid-winter remain 

 unchanged, and again I have noticed two or three nearly white and 

 stained by the sulphur wash so common in the winter weasel. 

 But generalising, pure white below, rusty white above, and pads, 

 nose, chin, circlets around the eyes, fronts of fore legs, and of ears, 

 rusty, may be called the winter pelage. 



On the first of November you scarcely see any change upon 

 them except a little grizly on the forehead, or the fronts of thighs 

 getting white. By December the change is complete. The change 

 back again as the animal is not so directly under our notice is not 

 so well known. However in mid-May, I have seen the forest filled 

 by brown hares. Their gambols and attitudes reminding me of the 

 maxim '^ as mad as a March hare." This, no doubt is their 

 sexual season, and analogy would make us suppose they had 

 completed their summer coating. As regards the nature of this 

 change my observation leads me to suppose it is caused by casting 

 the old hair and having it renewed by a new coat. The spring 

 change undoubtedly is thus caused, and nature never employs two 

 different causes. Those who maintain that it is caused by a sudden 

 change of colour, must explain how the end of each hair is only 

 changed, the base and middle remaining unchanged. In confine- 

 ment it is said they never change. I have no experience in this but 

 it is probably true, as I have seen, as before stated, individuals, 

 unchanged in mid-winter. This hare is very numerous in our 

 Province. Half-way in size to the Polar Hare, (X. glacialis.) 

 which changes into pure white and which inhabits Newfoundland 

 and Labrador to the Arctic circle, he is one half larger than the 

 wood hare, which inhabits Southern N. England {L. sylvaticus,) 

 and which never varies. Though our hare strays into N. England 

 and is found near the Arctic circle, neither of these species are 

 known with us. His habits are solitary and so vigilart or shy that 

 you scarce put him up in the forest, yet the thousu^ds that are 

 snared for the Halifax market, or the new fallen snow, covered and 

 crossed and recrossed by his tracks, attest his numbers. The 

 hemlock swamps are his favorite places, in the bunches of the long 



