or the Hudson’s bat territory. 
141 
their flight. This flight is so well known that many sportsmen 
line the shores of the island on the day named, and hundreds of 
these pretty little birds, which are good eating, are shot. 
Persons who have resided many years in Toronto have told me 
that they did not remember an instance of variation in the date of 
the arrival of these birds. 
Over almost every part of the wooded country of British 
North America, east of the Pocky Mountains, the American hare 
(Lepus americanus ), usually called the “ rabbit ” by the Hudson’s 
Bay Company’s people, is to be found in more or less abundance, 
and it may not be generally known that every ten years these 
animals are attacked by an epidemic so fatal, that from being 
very numerous they gradually die off until scarcely one is to be 
seen. The survival of the fittest then begins to increase, and at the 
end of ten years they are again at their maximum. I have myself 
seen two of those cycles, and know men in the Hudson’s Bay 
Co’s, service, who have witnessed four or five of such events. 
The latest years of abundance were 1885 and 1886, the hares 
having increased gradually from 1880-81, which were years of 
scarcity. The curious thing is that this takes place in the same 
years over an extent of country about as large as one fourth of 
Europe. It has been asserted by distinguished naturalists, among 
them by my friend Sir John Bichardson, that the hares migrate; 
but this cannot be the case, for it is not known where they go to, 
besides they are found sitting in their “ forms ” dead, usually under 
small pine or spruce trees, the branches of which grow close to the 
ground. I account for the disease in this way. The hares do not 
spread themselves broadcast all over the country, but live in 
colonies extending over a square mile or more, where the trees and 
plants on which they feed are abundant, and here they become so 
crowded together that the ground gets poisoned by their excreta, 
as is the case with domestic poultry when kept too long on the 
same land without being cleaned or shifted, and hence disease. 
The grouse disease in Scotland I attribute to the same cause, 
when too large a stock has been left on the moors. When the 
grouse “pack,” they have in winter some favourite resort to 
which they fly during storms (chiefly from the west) for shelter, 
and I have seen such places perfectly covered with droppings, 
even in Orkney, where grouse are never very numerous. 
The effect of these epidemics among the bares is peculiar, and 
affects both the Indians and some of the fur-bearing animals, 
as I shall endeavour to explain. 
