LITTLE FOLKS THAT GNAW 189 



scarcity of rabbits and hares in the North. Yet we 

 had few rabbits before the hawks arrived. It seems 

 difficult to believe that an epidemic could, in one 

 season, extend from Long Island Sound to Labrador. 

 On the other hand, a severe winter by no means 

 necessarily implies a dearth of rabbits. During 

 one of the severest winters of the past decade, when 

 the snow lay three feet deep from December 13th 

 till late March, I not only found the well-beaten 

 highroads and side-paths of innumerable cotton- 

 tails everywhere in our woods, but the snow-shoe 

 rabbits, or varying hares, were also not infrequent. 

 When spring finally came that year the hedgerow 

 bushes and small trees in remote clearings were often 

 ringed five or six feet above the ground, all the bark 

 being eaten off. The constant passage of the rab- 

 bits over their trails kept the snow packed, so they 

 were elevated well above the ground, and by stand- 

 ing on their hind legs they could feed high. The 

 effect was odd enough when the snow was gone. 



Old hunters tell me that hereabouts in Berkshire, 

 thirty or forty years ago, cottontail rabbits were 

 few in number. A rabbit-hunt meant the chase of 

 the varying hare, so called because his winter coat 

 is snow-white, or often called the snow-shoe rabbit 

 because of the odd, elongated print of his big hind 

 feet. The varying hare is much larger than the 

 cottontail, and, like his smaller cousin, subsists on 

 a strictly vegetable diet, including bark and twigs, 

 so that starvation is practically impossible. Just 

 why he is so rapidly disappearing, and the cotton- 

 tail, originally a more Southern species, so rapidly 

 more than taking his place, is a mystery. Neither 



