16 JACK RABBITS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Opinions seem to differ as to the abundance of the Prairie Hare, but 

 it is certainly more common in many places than in the localities just 

 described. Dr. A. K. Fisher has seen as many as 20 together near 

 Colby, Kans., and farther north it is killed in large quantities for 

 market. A commission house in St. Paul, Minn., reports having 

 handled about 12,000 jack rabbits during the winter of 1894-95, most 

 of which came from ISTorth and South Dakota, where this is the only 

 species. Several thousand are estimated to have been killed in Cod- 

 ington County, S. Dak., alone during tlie same season. Certainly it 

 must be tolerably abundant in these States to be obtained in such 

 numbers. In the northern part of the Great Basin it is also abundant 

 in certain localities, especially in southern Oregon. Comidaiuts have 

 recently been received from Wasliington that crops and young orchards 

 near Sunnyside, in tlie Yakima Valley, have been seriously injured, 

 while near Prescott, Wallawalla County, timber claims planted with 

 black locust trees have been ruined by the White-tailed Jack Rabbit. 



Farther south it was met with in considerable numbers by J. K. Lord, 

 during his journey from The Dalles to Walla Walla. In describing the 

 country between the John Day and the l^matilla rivers he says:' 

 "As we ride on, I noticed what I at tirst imagined must be the 

 droppings of a large flock of sheep covering the ground tlMckly,just 

 as though the animals had been folded. I had barely time to think 

 what animal could be so abundant, when the dogs, tired as they were, 

 started two or three large hares from under the wild sage bushes. 

 We saw numbers of them, and sliot several, but the flesh tasted so 

 strongly of the wild sage, on which these hares mainly subsist, that 

 eating it v;as an impossibility. The Prairie Hare {Lcpus cnnipestris) 

 apj)ears entirely confined to these sandy desert lands, being replaced 

 by the Ked Hare {L. irashitigtonii) in the timbered districts. 



"The fur of the Prairie Hare i.s long and silky, and exactly the color 

 of the sand and tiie dead leaves under the bushes where they make 

 their 'forms.' Uuless they move, it is impossible to distinguish them, 

 although looking down on their backs," Put when once startled they 

 are off in an instant, and their characteristic actions at such times are 

 thus described by Dr. Coues: ' 



Tho. extraordiiiiiry ability of tliis animal, which would be inferred from inMpeutioQ 

 of itslitho y«'t ninHCular and free-limbed Hha]»c, lias always attracted attcutiou. * • * 

 Tho (irst si-^n one has nsnally of a hare which has stpiatted low in hopes of couceal- 

 mcnt, till its fears force it to lly is a k'*-'* bonnd into the air, with lengthened 

 Ixidy and erect ears. The instant it toneiies the gronnd it is up again, with a pectil- 

 iar springy Jerk, more like the rebonntlmg of an elastic ball than the result of 

 muscular exertion. It does uot conn- fairly down, and gather itself for the next 

 spring, but seems to hold it« legs stiHly extended, to tonch only its toes, and rebound 

 by tho force of its impact. The action is strikingly suggestive of the 'bucking' of 

 a mule, an affair with which people in the West are «mly too familiar. With a 

 Buccession of these high Jerky leaps the animal makes off generally in a straight 



' Naturalist in British Columbia, II, IKfitJ, pp. 95-!t(). 

 «BulI. Essex Institute, VII (1875), 187G, pp. 83-85. 



