536 THE FAUNA OF MONTANA TERRITORY. 

summer its powers of enduring thirst must be great, unless 
it gets enough dew on the grass to supply its wants. 
Prairie Hare (Lepus Townsendii). This hare is common 
east of the Rocky Mountains, and was seen on Deer Lodge ) 
and other high places west of their summit, but asin 18531 
found none on the Columbian Plain, though the climate and 
vegetation seems well adapted for them. Their numbers 
seem never to have increased much north of the Columbia 
and Snake rivers since the epidemic (small-pox?) destroyed 
them several years since, but south of those rivers they be- 
come common. It is a question whether an epidemic really 
made them scarce northward, or whether the prevalence of 
uncommon deep snow did not enable the Indians to kill more 
of them, as with deer and antelopes. : 
Sace Hare (Lepus. artemisia). This small species 38 
more rare near Fort Benton, and I did not see it west of the 
mountains, except among the Artemisia bushes at Old Fort 
Walla Walla, Townsend’s original locality. Near Fort Lar- 
amie it frequents, chiefly, the rocky places where it can hide 
in holes, not trusting to its speed on the open plains, like L. 
Townsendii, and is therefore very rare, if found at all, on the 
bare plains. The eastern Z. sylvaticus, so similar to it as to 
be scarcely distinguishable, seems to extend its range along 
the Missouri and Platte rivers. The difference in color, which 
is the chief distinction, is analogous to that seen in the be 
varieties of Tamias, ete., inhabiting the woods and the pe 
! CARIBOU, or WOODLAND REINDEER (Rangifer Caribou): 
About twenty-five miles above the Bitterroot ferry, in cross- 
ing a high hill near the river, I noticed by the roadside a pe 
of decayed and broken horns, which looked like those of the r 
Woodland Reindeer, before reported to inhabit the Northern 
Rocky Mountains, and from which a district of British Co- 
lumbia has been named Caribou. These horns were ™ 
slender and elongated than that represented by Baird (Mame 
mals, p. 634), but he remarks that scarcely any tW° par a 
are alike. . 
Ses AEN EE EEI OET IEL N AE PA E EEE ER Reuse aa 2 7 aie Ck 






