Coues.] 88 [June 2, 



The animal's general configuration is more squat and bunchy; it 

 seems to run with its body nearer the ground; scuttles along with 

 shorter, quicker steps, more constrained and spasmodic, moving by 

 jerks, as it were; and has little or nothing of the free bouncing 

 movements that mark the progress of the wood rabbit. In these 

 respects the last named species is exactly intermediate between the 

 marsh rabbit and the large "Jackass" hares (L. callotis, etc.) of the 

 West, in which length of stride, height of bound, and general free- 

 dom of swinging gait, reach an extreme. These Western hares are 

 the swiftest of their tribe in this country, and the marsh rabbit is 

 just the opposite. As attested by all observers, the speed of the 

 latter is appreciably less than that of even the wood rabbit, though 

 it certainly appears to get over the ground quite cleverly, particularly 

 to one who has just missed, by undershooting, a running shot. 



The marsh rabbit has the habit, common to otfier species, of evad- 

 ing the pursuit of dogs by throwing them off its track, making a 

 detour, and returning to the spot whence it was started. I have 

 frequently witnessed this performance — the animal, after running at 

 its best for a few yards, with the dog close at its heels, plunging into 

 some thick clump of bushes, reappearing after a few moments to one 

 side or the other, at right angles to its original course, and then steal- 

 ing quietly along at an easy gait, while the dog was intently pursuing 

 a contrary direction. After this exploit, the rabbit usually came 

 directly back to the spot where I stood, and could be very easily 

 secured. I did not observe upon such occasions that the animal 

 directed its course more particularly toward the marsh, than in any 

 other direction. 



During February, March, and April, every specimen out of a score 

 or more that I examined, was terribly infested with ticks. 1 These 

 parasites were found clinging all over the body, but were especially 

 numerous about the head, neck and ears — the latter more particularly. 

 Both the inner and outer surfaces of the ears were, in some instances, 

 literally covered. Notwithstanding such extreme infestation, the 

 animals did not appear to have been materially inconvenienced, and 

 they certainly had not suffered in flesh, or general appearance. Ac- 

 cording to Audubon and Bachman, the marsh hare is also " infested 

 with a troublesome larva of an oestrus in the summer and autumn; 



1 My friend, Dr. A. S. Packard, Jr„ to whom I sent specimens for identification, 

 discovers these ticks to be of an undescribed species of Ixodes, which he has called 

 I, leporis-pcUustris. (Ann. Rep. Peab. Acad, of Science, 1869.) 



