Great Plains Jack Rabbit 41 
The animal is very local in its habits, not wandering very 
far from its form, and if startled therefrom and pursued, 
w^ill almost invariably circle about and return to it within a 
short distance. 
The disproportionately large hind feet, with their widely 
spreading toes, form admirable snowshoes, and enable the 
animal to make its way about in comparative ease in the deep 
snows of the regions where it lives. Except in very soft snow 
the rabbit sinks in but little. The track left by the hind 
foot is much larger than that of a jack rabbit having a hind 
foot of equal length. 
The group of rabbits which are known under this name 
are subject to a periodical epidemic which destroys large 
numbers of them. In the northern portions of British 
America, where the Indians and trappers are largely dependent 
on these rabbits for their winter's food, this epidemic is a 
very serious matter at times, and by killing so many of the 
rabbits reduces the natives to very serious straits. This 
epidemic occurs every six or eight years, when the animals 
are in their greatest abundance; their numbers become re- 
duced, in a year or two, to nearly nothing; then they gradu- 
ally increase again until they are as common as ever; then 
another epidemic, and so it goes in cycles. I have no account 
of any such disease among our Colorado Snowshoe Rabbits, 
though, as noted previously, something similar occurs among 
the jack rabbits. 
Lepus calif ornicus melanotis (of or from California; 
Grk. melas, black + oHs, ear). Great Plains 
Jack Rabbit. 
Lepus melanotis Mearns, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., {{., p. 297 
(1890). 
Type locality. — Near Independence, Montgomery County, Kansas. 
Measurements. — Total length, 23.5; tail vert., 3.0; hind foot, 5.5; 
ear, 4.25. 
