GRAY RABBIT. 183 



schaften. Er kann also unmoglich etwas anders als eine fiir sich beste- 

 hende Art sein. Sein Vaterland is ganz Nord-Amerika, von Hudson's 

 Bay an bis nacb Florida hinab. Er schweift nicht herum, sondern 

 schrankt sich auf kleine Raume ein. 



In Hudson's Baj', Canada und Neu-England vertauscht er sein kurzes 

 Sommerhaar im Herbste gegen ein langes seitenartiges und bis an die 

 Wurzel silberweisses Haar, und nur der Rand der Ohren und der 

 Schwanz behalten ihre Farbe, (Pennant, Kalm.) In den siidlichen Lan- 

 dern bleibt die Farbe, auch in den hiirtesten Wintern, unverandert, 

 (Kalm.) 



Daher konnte man diesen Hasen fiiglich den /ia?6-veranderlichen 

 nennen." 



In carefully reading the above description, the attentive reader can 

 scarcely have failed to remark that if Lepus Americanus of Erxleben, and 

 Lepus Hudsonius of Pallas, are the Northern hare, Lepus nanus must be 

 the same species, as the descriptions agrefe in every particular ; and where 

 ScHREBER enters more into detail, he describes the Northern hare still 

 more minutely, and only confirms us still farther in the conviction that 

 he had never seen the Gray Rabbit, and was describing the very species 

 he professed to describe, viz., the Hudson's Ba}' quadruped of Daines 

 Bareington, (See vol. Ixii. Phil. Trans., p. 11,) and the "American hare, 

 called rabbit at Hudson's Bay," of Fokster, (See the above vol., p. 376,) 

 which, however, had already received from two of his countrymen, Pallas 

 and Erxleben, the names of L. Americanus and L. Hudsonius. 



The time when this description was made must not be overlooked. At 

 the close of the year 1772, the Philosophical Transactions, containing the 

 two accounts of this new American hare, were published. No specific 

 Latin name, such as would accort'ing to the binary s}"stem w^hich was 

 then coming into use, entitle the first describer to the species, had as j'et 

 been given to it ; and whilst the English naturalists were looking for de- 

 cided characters, by which it could be distinguished, (and we know from 

 experience with how much difficulty these characteristics are found in 

 the hares,) the German naturalists, with the example of Linnaeus, their 

 next door neighbour, before their eyes, went forward in hot haste to de- 

 scribe the species. Leaving the English philosophers to cook their ani- 

 mal, to ascertain by the colour of its flesh whether it was a hare or a rab- 

 bit, they sought for a Latin cognomen, desirous that their own names 

 should be handed down to posterity along with it. Hence Erxleben, Pal- 

 lab and ScHREBER, (the two former evidently without the knowledge of 



