1 882.] The Gray Rabbit (Lepits sylvaticits ) . 943 



to them is chargeable to the field mice, which will bark trees 

 both below and above the snow line. The rabbit will girdle 

 young trees, and the very small trees of the nursery it will not 

 only bark, but will cut off the branches and eat them. Thave in ' 

 mind a nurseryman who had not yet learned this fact, and would 

 not permit a gray rabbit to be in any way molested on his prem- 

 ises. The tender hearted fellow soon woke up to his mistake. 

 The animals became emboldened and took possession, and very 

 soon many thousands of young trees were utterly ruined. At 

 last, in dismay, he besought the help of his neighbors, and a war 

 of extermination was proclaimed. 



Could it be got at, the ancient lore as touching the ancestry of 

 L. sylvaticus, would be well worth the telling. Even before his- 

 tory began, though a numerous, the coneys were always a feeble 

 folk, and fair game for all animals carnivorously inclined. In 

 classic Greek we find a word meaning " killing of hares," and the 

 word hare a synonym for coward. And as for the poor fellow 

 who was harried or hen-pecked, their philosopher Posidonius 

 would say: " he led a hare's life." If remoteness of origin may 

 count for much, the ancestry of the hares is extremely ancient. 

 I am puzzled by a small fossil bone now lying on my table. It 

 is from the Dakota Miocene, and is part of the left side of the 

 under jaw of a hare. There are a number of these fossil or ex- 

 tinct American hares, for which Professor Leidy raised the genus 

 Palaeolagus, " the ancient hare." This jaw is, I think, that of a 

 young individual, but I dare not guess the immense remoteness 

 of that period in which it had to fulfill its mission as a prolific 

 food provider for the numerous and terrible Felidae then existing. 

 Probably the environment or life conditions of the Leporidae have 

 improved since the Miocene times ; for my fragment has the five 

 molars so strongly set, and yet so small, that the owner surely 

 was a smaller animal than our gray-rabbit, itself so small among 

 those to which it is germane, as to merit the epithet familiar to 

 naturalists—" the little wood hare." I think the ancient could 

 not achieve the deft leaps of the modern. As I see it, the body 

 was shorter and thicker set, and its pug face, could a fancier but 

 imagine the style, would educe the fancy name, " chunky chaps." 



As already seen, the wild rabbit is very prolific ; hence it is the 

 only one of our large rodents that in any measure holds its own 

 against the onflow of civilization. And yet its enemies are many. 



