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Varying Hare — Part 5
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Only the winter before I had tramped through these same woods after almost every tracking snow, and I am able to say positively that the gray rabbit was the only species to be found there, and three years later it was the same again; the only one that has visited these woods since then, as far as I can learn, being a solitary individual that the next winter passed within half a mile of the house where I write, going due southeast without swerving more than a few rods from a direct course at any time and crossing open fields and meadows indifferently.
I followed its tracks closely for nearly two miles and saw no evidence of its having stopped to eat or rest at any time. Finally it struck off across a wind-swept field where the drifting snow wholly obliterated its footprints, and I have often wondered what eventually became of the solitary wanderer hopping away alone towards the sea whose roar was already distinctly audible only a few miles away.
From what I can learn I should say that the border land between the countries of the white rabbit and the gray is somewhere between forty and fifty miles to the north of this southeastern corner of New Hampshire; beyond that I have been unable as yet to find the gray rabbits, though for the first thirty miles they are as abundant as they are here, and further west their range is said to extend well up into Canada.
Mr. P. C. True writing from Pittsfield, New Hampshire, under date of March 1st 1899, says: "I have consulted a number of veteran fox hunters here and gathered what information I could on the subject.
"The white rabbits, or jacks, as they are called here, have almost disappeared; what few are left are found only in the big forests. I am told that the cause of the departure is that the conies devour their young; conies are very numerous as were jacks previous to the last decade. The first are said to have been brought here from Massachusetts by an old fox hunter some thirty years ago."
The earlier writers of the natural history of this country pretty generally agree in giving the habitat of the northern hare as the whole of the Eastern states south to Virginia, and scarcely allude to the gray rabbit at all, some authors describing it as a Western species not found east of the Mississippi. But Thoreau's diary written in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, half a century ago and more, makes no mention of the larger species, all the hares referred to being unmistakably cotton-tails.
Last winter, 1898-9, I paid frequent visits to the only permanent colony of white rabbits that I know of in this region, situated three or four miles to the northeast, where they occupy perhaps one hundred acres of old growth timber, only occasionally wandering into the neighbouring woods and swamps where the gray rabbits abound.
But the latter in small numbers penetrate to all parts of the white rabbits' domain, some of them even taking up their quarters in the very heart of it, and I have sore misgivings that sooner or later the original inhabitants will be forced to leave, for just as the white men have driven away the dark-skinned native, so among the hares matters seem to be reversed, and the dark-skinned new-comer is driving off the native whites.
Varieties of the Varying Hare
1. Varying Hare. Lepus americanus virginianus (Harlan). Range and description as above.
2. Labrador Varying Hare. Lepus americanus Erxleben. Yellowish-brown to drab in summer, always pure white in winter.
3. Nova Scotian Varying Hare. Lepus americanus struthiopus Bangs. Much darker and duller than the varying hare, with no ferruginous tints.