28 LEPORIDiE. 



in latitudes removed a little further north exhibit it in 

 a partial degree, and the complete assumption of the 

 white coat commences only in Canada. 



Other discrepancies, met with in various writers as to 

 its size, weight, number of young, and so on, which are 

 so puzzling and contradictory, may be traced to the 

 adoption of different methods of measuring, and to the 

 use in one instance of stuffed specimens, in another of 

 freshly killed ones; to weighing at non-corresponding 

 seasons of the year; and to the mixing up in various 

 accounts, of this hare mth the " grey-rabbit" or others, 

 a confusion increased by the indiscriminate application 

 of the term " Lepus Americanus." Hence it is that we 

 find one author stating its length to be thirty-one inches, 

 and another only half that ; one informing us that it 

 never weighs more than three pounds, another that its 

 usual weight is between six and seven pounds. In one 

 work Ave are told that it breeds four times in the 

 season, while others affirm that it does so only thrice 

 in the year; one says that it has not more than from 

 two to four at a birth, and another, that it has from 

 five to seven. The true length of a full-sized, freshly 

 killed specimen, measured from the point of the nose to 

 the root of the tail, is, according to the " Canadian Na- 

 turalist," nineteen inches and a quarter, and of smaller 

 animals often only sixteen inches. Its weight varies 



