§4 GILPIN — ON THE MAM3£ALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



may be considered complete except the whiskers. I have noticed 

 other specimens where the sides and dorsal regions were mottled 

 white and brown on the whole sm^ace instead of changing in 

 patches. 



From these observations, we gather that the first appearance of 

 winter change occurs in front of thighs, and rump, that almost 

 immediately the backs of the ears become hoary, and white patches 

 appear on the sides of nose, cheeks and forehead, and that whilst 

 the white of the rump is stealing over the tail and up the back, the 

 white of the belly is rising to meet it, and the patches of white are 

 stealing over the face, the nape and fore shoulders ; that in some 

 comparatively rare instances a general mottling of white and brown 

 takes place, instead of these regular approaches. The hare in his 

 full winter coat in Nova Scotia is pure white beneath and on thighs 

 and rump ; rusty white on dorsal regions ; nose, around the eyes, 

 front folds of ears, fronts of fore legs and hind legs, light rust. 

 The pads and the narrow black edge and tip of ear remains 

 unchanged, the pads being soiled white or light yellow. On the 

 dorsal regions the hair is plumbeous at base, rusty in middle and 

 white at tip ; beneath thighs and rump, longer and plumbeous at 

 base with white extremities. With regard to the secondary cause 

 of these changes but little can be found in systematic writers. Mr. 

 Welch attributes, in his able paper before mentioned, to first a 

 new growth of long and thicker white hair which as it were 

 out-colours the brown, and to a change of colour in the remaining 

 brown to a pure white with plumbeous base, and that no shedding 

 takes place. From his description he has studied more boreal 

 specimens than ours, since he calls the animal pure white. Whilst 

 te has the analogy of the whiskers, which we know do not shed, 

 and which we study from time to time, now all black, now the tip 

 white, now all white, and whilst there comes to us a certain 

 conviction we are studying the same individual hairs, yet in other 

 animals which we have watched more closely there is an autumnal 

 change. Our horses as everyone knows, who rides them or inspects 

 the stables, have a large autumnal shed, a strawberry roan espe- 

 cially an old one, will have broad patches of hoary on his rump in 

 mid-winter. The cariboo sheds by handfulls in Novemberj as also 



