159 
most dogs. Its powerful hind legs and strong dorsal muscles enable it to 
take leaps of ten to fifteen feet. It hops along when feeding, a foot or 
two atatime. The position of the feet in ruuning is peculiar; the fore 
feet strike the surface near «ach other ; the hind feet are widely separated 
and come to the earth some distance in front of the fore feet; the fore 
feet touch the ground but lightly; they are at once raised, and the bound 
is repeated with the hind legs only. The impression, at first sight of the 
track in the snow, is that the animal has been running backwards. In 
making the longest leaps, the front feet come down in the same line, and 
at some distance behind the back feet. 
In winter I have seen them burrowing in the deep snow in the same 
drifts with the Prairie Hen, and for the same reason, to get shelter from 
an unusually severe storm. The Wild Rabbit is not naturally, however, a 
burrowing animal, as is the Kuropean Rabbit, often domesticated in the 
country. 
As to the common name, Rabbit, so often given to the present species, 
it is not properly applicable to any of the American Hares. Lepus 
cuniculus, the Burrowing Rabbit of Kurope, is the Rabbit proper, differing 
from other Old World and from American forms in the shortness of its 
hind legs. Hare is the proper generic or family name, Rabbit originally 
being the distinctive name of the particular species cwnzculus, the Rabbit 
of Kurope. But the two terms have now come to be interchangeable in 
this country, and, “however philologically or technically wrong it may 
be to apply the term Rabbit to any of our wild species, the custom of 
doing so among the generality of our people, is doubtless as ineradicably 
fixed as is that of calling the American Bison a Bufflo.” (Allen.) 
LEPUS AMERICANUS Erxleben. 
Var. virginianus Allen. 
SOUTHERN VARYING HARE, 
1825. Lepus virgenianus, Harlan, Fn. Am., 1825, 196.—Fischer, Syn., 1829, 
3/6.—Doughty, Cab Nat. Hist., 1, 1830, 217, pl. xix.—Bachman, 
Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., vii, 1837, 301 (mainly ; somewhat 
mixed with ZL. campestris) —Emmons, Quad. Mass, 1840, 58.— 
Thompson, Nat. Hist. Vermont, 1842, 48. 
1337. Lepus americanus, Bachman, Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., vii, 
1837, 403; viii, 1839, 76 (in part only).—DeKay, N. Y. Zod, i, 
1842, 95, pl. xxvi, fig.2 (in part only).—Wagner, Suppl. Schreb. 
Saug., 1844, iv, 104 Gm part only).—Aud. & Bach., Q. N. A., i, 
1349, 73, pl. xi, xii (in part only).—Baird, M. N. A., 1857, 579 
Gn part on’y).—Cr-y, Arn and Maz: Nat Eras’ (Od err, xx, 
