314 LEPORID^— LEPUS 



distinctly coming up together, so that I suspect Collett to be in error. 

 The spring moult is much more easily observed, and there has never 

 been doubt about it. Although irregular, it is much less so than that 

 of autumn ; some individuals may regain their summer coat in March, 

 while others received on 24th April 1899, through Ogilvie - Grant, 

 from the third Lord Cawdor, Cawdor Estate, Nairn, were then in full 

 moult ; and the same date is applicable to Perthshire (Rodger). In the 

 Outer Hebrides also the white coat may be carried until the end of 

 April (Harvie-Brown and Buckley, Outer Hebrides, 39), and in the 

 south of Scotland partially white hares may be seen until the third 

 week of that month (Evans for the Ochils), and even later (4th May, 

 Campsie Fells, Clyde area, Boyd Watt; 9th May, Pentlands, one 

 partially white, Evans, MS). In Wales A. H. Macpherson {Zoologist, 

 1890, 216) observed two apparently quite white individuals at a height 

 of 2500 feet on Snowdon, on 6th April 1900. The variation in details 

 is easily accounted for as resulting from an irregular and almost con- 

 tinuous change of coat influenced and subject to local conditions of 

 climate, shelter, food, and the idiosyncrasy of each animal. 



The skull is typical of true Lepus (see above, p. 293). It dififers from 

 that of Z. hibernicus in its smaller size (see details under L. hibernicus, 

 where every item of the latter, except the length of the mandibular 

 tooth-row, is greater) ; and in the more elevated superciliary processes. 

 The teeth, both incisors and molars, upper and lower, are narrower, 

 lighter, and shorter than in L. hibernicus ; hence the mandible is not so 

 deep, and the growing ends of the lower incisors show just in front of 

 the tooth-rows. In europceus the mandible is longer, and, in agreement 

 with the shorter cheek-teeth, shallower ; the growing ends of the short 

 lower incisors fail to reach the tooth-rows by at least the lateral breadth 

 of a cheek-tooth (see Fig. 48, p. 315). 



Individual colour variation is very frequent and conspicuous, being 

 dependent, besides age, on the amount of whitening undergone by 

 individuals. Apart from the influence of moults and whitening, there 

 appears to be frequently present a certain amount of dichromatism, 

 which exhibits itself in two varieties, one the ordinary deep brown 

 form, the other yellowish. 



Abnormal colour variations are rare. A black female in the 

 possession of the Duke of Portland was taken at Braemore, Langwell, 

 Caithness, on 3rd February 1902 (Dunbar, Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist, 1902, 

 250 ; Anstey, Field, 22nd February 1902, 281). Another black specimen 

 from Achnaclay, Caithness — not Galashiels, Roxburgh,^(/^ Eagle Clarke 

 — (Small, Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist., 1903, 116), is now in the Royal 

 Scottish Museum. Buff varieties have been recorded, as by Millais, 

 but the species has not always been made clear; a yellow pink-eyed 

 individual was observed to turn white in winter (Crawshay, Field, 31st 



