HARES. In the United States the names bare and rabbit are used indiscriminately for various species of rodents of the family Lepori dce. Hare is the generic term, while rabbit is applied properly to single short-legged European species of essentially burrowing habits whose naked blind and helpless young are nurtured in underground nests (see RABBIT). None of the native American species have these character istics. The second pair of upper incisors are small, non-functional and placed directly be hind the large gnawing teeth, a peculiarity which distinguishes the hares and a few allied forms from all other rodents. The ears are always large, the tail short, bushy and upturned, the forelimbs short and five-toed, the hind ones long and four-toed and the soles of the feet densely hairy. Hares are exclusively vegetarian. They are extremely timid, alert and have keen senses. They move with peculiar erratic leaps and with great speed for short distances and walk with a peculiar .shuffling gait by placing the entire sole of the hind foot on the ground. A favorite attitude is that of resting on the haunches with the head erect ; but the forelimbs lack altogether the prehensile powers of the squirrels. None of them are arboreal or aquatic. The older catalogues enumerate from 20 to 30 species from all parts of the world except Australasia, but chiefly belonging to the northern hemisphere. With a very few exceptions all the hares are included in the single genus Lepus.
The gray rabbit, wood rabbit or cottontail L. floridanus or L. sylvaticus) is very plentiful throughout eastern North America north to Ontario. It frequents thickets and brier patches on the borders of woods, multiplying excessively in the more thickly settled regions and replacing the more retiring varying hare. All kinds of succulent herbage, bark, berries and buds, the latter especially in winter, form the rabbit's food which it seeks to a large extent along regularly established runways, not infrequently leading to the farmer's truck-patch. Although it does not itself burrow, the cottontail frequently escapes its pursuers by retreating into the holes of woodchucks, skunks, etc., in this respect and some others resembling the true European rab bit more closely than any other American species. Several broods of four to six young are raised each year. At birth they are blind and helpless, and are protected in a nest built in a depression in the ground of dried grass or weeds lined with the rabbit's own fur, with which they are covered when left alone by the mother.
The varying hare or white rabbit (L. ameri canus) is a larger species with longer hind legs, taking its name from the alternating brown and white color of summer and winter respect ively, a change which is less complete south ward.. The white winter coat is produced, on the approach of snowy weather, by an actual disappearance of the brown pigment in the hairs.
The brown coat in spring is resumed by the molting of the old white hairs and the growing of a new brown coat. In one or other of its varieties this hare ranges from Virginia north ward to Hudson Bay and is common in the hemlock forests northward. This is a typical hare, which depends for its safety from foxes, lynxes, weasels, hawks, owls and numerous other enemies solely upon its quick senses and great speed, aided by the concealing effect of its white fur in winter. It never enters bur rows, but lives by day and night with no other shelter than that afforded by thickets. Feeding chiefly by night it travels along regular runways used in common by several individuals, a fact which is sometimes taken advantage of by foxes and other enemies to compass their de struction. A favorite winter food is the bark and buds of the birch tree. Scarcely any nest is formed for the young, which are fully active a short time after birth. A somewhat similar species is the polar hare (L. arcticus), a pure white species of high northern latitudes. These hares are the principal resources for food of all the northern carnivores, especially the foxes, martens and lynx. They are much subject to intestinal diseases, which at intervals of about seven years reduce their numbers al most to extinction and this has a very serious effect on the fur-bearing animals and the market receipts of their pelts, and on the native Indians of the far north.
The jack-rabbit or prairie hare (L. cans pestns) is representative of a groupof large, in long-legged, big-eared hares that inhabit the Western plains and whose lives are spent mostly the For short distances they are perhaps the swiftest quadrupeds known. Their lives are spent among the bushes, upon twigs of which they feed, and where their young are dropped and within a short time required to shift for themselves. In cultivated districts the jack-rabbits increase enormously and become great pests. As a consequence they are much hunted, not only with dog and gun and snare,. as are the Eastern species, but by the organization of extensive •drives,* which result in the destruction of thousands, the bodies of which are shipped to the markets. Coursing them with greyhounds after the Eng lish fashion (see COURSING) is an exciting and favorite sport. Their fur is extensively utilized for making felt hats.
The marsh hare (L. palustris) and water hare (L. aquaticus), of the southern Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi Valley respect ively, are rather short-legged species, which differ from the others in the readiness with which they will enter water.
In Europe the common hare (L. timidus), the mountain hare (L. variabilis), from which the domestic races have been derived, are the principal species. Consult Coues and Allen, (Monographs of the Rodentia) (Washington 1877) ; Stone and Cram, (New York 1902) ; Ingersoll, (Life of Mam mals> (New York 1906).