108 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
excursions are made, remains of course unknown. The trouble is, 
that in summer there is lack of sign and in winter the necessity no longer 
exists. Ocular evidence can occur only as a rarity. Occasionally one 
comes upon ‘‘sign” such as the following. 
While traveling one winter day down the Hay River in western Al- 
berta I came to a narrow part of the course where the constriction of 
the banks forced the water to greater speed. Here there was an open 
riffle of several hundred yards in length by about four or five in width. 
Otherwise, ice covered the entire river. This rift of dark swift water 
in mid-channel raced along at about eight or ten miles an hour. Pres- 
ently in the fresh fallen snow I noticed the tracks of a snowshoe rabbit, 
leading down from the timber on my left, across the shore ice, and termi- 
nating on the brink. Walking down stream I solved the puzzle by 
seeing a sodden splash in the snow on the further side where the animal 
had been swept down and had clambered out dripping from the plunge. 
The tracks were then resumed across the white snow field, disappearing 
in the woods beyond. This was the first time I ever noticed this oc- 
currence, was indeed the first intimation that a rabbit ever even wet 
its feet unless forced to do so. The nature of the trail in this instance 
proved it to be an action of leisurely choice. No fox or ermine trailed 
along in the wake of a wild bounding hare ready to submit to water 
rather than to jaws, for back trailing I found nothing calculated to 
urge the rabbit from its own placid ramble. To our ordinary every- 
day conception of its nature the whole affair seems a paradox. I know 
I was utterly taken back at the time, but was forced to accept the evi- 
dence of my own eyes. Since then I have heard or read of similar ob- 
servations by others. I have, by the way, in years since, known red 
squirrels to do the same thing. On one other occasion a couple of 
years ago in New Ontario, I had further evidence of the hare’s accom- 
plishment as a swimmer. The conditions were similar to the incident 
already related. 
When such things at times crop up and tax our credulity on a basis 
of unimpeachable evidence, how eloquently it argues for untraveled 
byways in nature which we have yet to explore. There is something 
vital in the reflection that there are puzzles to solve, occultisms to 
stumble upon. When such phases in the life-history of our native 
mammals, thought previously to be well understood, suddenly appear 
from the unknown or what we consider as the improbable, what absorb- 
ing facts, perhaps, remain still to be learned from the lives of the 
hunted. 
Guelphf Ontario, 
