And little wonder that the hind limbs, with their armament of claws should be quite effective when we recall that grand out-fit of muscles, which enables them to make such prodigious leaps. We spoke of the surprise of the immigrant at the lusty kicking of the entrapped rabbit. Such conduct is, however, exceptional, or at most it lasts for a very short time. When taken by the hand, the captured rabbit at first, in its terror, utters a plaintive but musical cry; it is not properly a squeak; and after a few impotent struggles, it is dazed into a passive submission. Thus an adult gray rabbit may be carried lying full length on one's arm, the front toes being loosely held between the fingers, although it has been taken but five minutes from the trap. After a little show of resistance it has submitted to the situation. Once when riding with my daughter, we came upon a gorgeous patch of Lupinus perennis by the roadside. I got out to gather some, when a young rabbit sprang out of the glowing bed of purple bloom. It dashed into a heap of brush near by, which enabled me to capture it without inflicting injury. I bore my pretty prize to the carriage. But though only for a moment, that plaintive whistle in the minor key, so flute-like and so pitiful, kept piping in our ears. Our hearts misgave us. Daughter plead for the little prisoner's release; that decided the matter. I bore it gently back to the bed of lupines, where it easily hid itself, and like a helpless little prince was safe under the royal purple.

This almost non-resistant quality of the gray rabbit, has given me a liking for it. It is your pampered tame one that excels in the mulish accomplishment of kicking at his master. But when "striking out" becomes a virtue, the mother gray-back has been known to shine. Once when inspecting the animals of a certain. institution, unconsciously I was getting too near a long-eared mongrel, at which his tender shouted: "Keep away from that mule or he'll stoop up at you, and if you do excite his upsetting sin you'll get his compliments, and you won't forget it either!" We ejaculated: “The long-eared hybrid!" "Yes, sir, that's so," responded the animal-man, "he is high bred. His father before him was a good trick mule." What sharp observers these "animalmen" are. Who but the mule-man could so tersely describe the precise pivotal politeness of the beast. And what method in his salaam to a stranger. First the ears are set well back. Next, down goes the head, then, as if this formalist were fulcrumed at

the middle, upward and backward go the heels; and the impression made is not to be forgotten. But for real "fancy sparring," no trick-mule could equal the deftly hitting of that mother grayback who fought a huge black snake to rescue her young one. The reptile was rapidly bearing it away. A little low cry, though at quite a distance, was heard by the mother-hare, for their sense of hearing is marvelously keen. A few desperate leaps and she had caught up and joined issue with her dreadful foe. The snake dropped its prey, its sulphurous eyes glowed in luminous rage, and it sprang. But the heroic mother leaped into the air, making a curve over its enemy, and just at passing the middle of this arc putting in most deftly a double shot behind, which sent the serpent rolling and squirming in the dust. This feat was several times repeated, the snake darting and snapping wildly, until its mouth was filled with hair, without inflicting any real hurt on the little heroine. The reptile was cowering fast and would fain slink away; but the witness of this fierce battle now came to the rabbit's aid. The black reptile was soon destroyed, and the brave mother left to her little one.

I think the above should warrant a clear distinction between timidity and cowardice. It is the bravery of maternal desperation. Though succumbing at last, I have witnessed a gallant fight of a young rat with a large pine snake (Pituophis melanoleucus). These very serpents are fond of young rabbits, and will capture them much as they do birds. Call it enchantment, fascination, charming, or what one will, there is a fearful nervous subjection. The poor little beast loses head. A farmer in the Pines told me that he saw at some distance up the road, a halfgrown rabbit, and was somewhat surprised to see that it did not stir at his coming, but looked steadily at one spot. large pine snake slowly crawling up to its victim. went up to the rabbit, gave it a push with my foot, off at a lively gait. You see the spell was broken. The snake seeing me, made for the woods and got away.

There was a Said he: "I when it went

The mink and the weasel are especially feared by the wild rabbit. In Europe the ferret is used to hunt rabbits. If our common weasel appears in a neighborhood, the rabbits will soon be exterminated for a considerable area.

In the winter the gray-rabbit is very destructive to young trees, and is the dread of the nurseryman, although much mischief laid

to them is chargeable to the field mice, which will bark trees both below and above the snow line. The rabbit will girdle young trees, and the very small trees of the nursery it will not only bark, but will cut off the branches and eat them. I have in mind a nurseryman who had not yet learned this fact, and would not permit a gray rabbit to be in any way molested on his premises. The tender hearted fellow soon woke up to his mistake. The animals became emboldened and took possession, and very soon many thousands of young trees were utterly ruined. At last, in dismay, he besought the help of his neighbors, and a war of extermination was proclaimed.

Could it be got at, the ancient lore as touching the ancestry of L. sylvaticus, would be well worth the telling. Even before history began, though a numerous, the coneys were always a feeble folk, and fair game for all animals carnivorously inclined. In classic Greek we find a word meaning "killing of hares," and the word hare a synonym for coward. And as for the poor fellow who was harried or hen-pecked, their philosopher Posidonius. would say: "he led a hare's life." If remoteness of origin may count for much, the ancestry of the hares is extremely ancient. I am puzzled by a small fossil bone now lying on my table. It is from the Dakota Miocene, and is part of the left side of the under jaw of a hare. There are a number of these fossil or extinct American hares, for which Professor Leidy raised the genus Palæolagus, "the ancient hare." This jaw is, I think, that of a young individual, but I dare not guess the immense remoteness of that period in which it had to fulfill its mission as a prolific food provider for the numerous and terrible Felidæ then existing. Probably the environment or life conditions of the Leporida have improved since the Miocene times; for my fragment has the five molars so strongly set, and yet so small, that the owner surely was a smaller animal than our gray-rabbit, itself so small among those to which it is germane, as to merit the epithet familiar to naturalists-" the little wood hare." I think the ancient could not achieve the deft leaps of the modern. As I see it, the body was shorter and thicker set, and its pug face, could a fancier but imagine the style, would educe the fancy name," chunky chaps."

As already seen, the wild rabbit is very prolific; hence it is the only one of our large rodents that in any measure holds its own against the onflow of civilization. And yet its enemies are many.

Even the domestic cat will take to the woods and become almost a fera, and subsist largely on young rabbits. To man with dog and gun, the pursuit of the rabbit seems to have a fascination. To me, the yelping bark of the hound when he has scented the little thing, is always distressing. Old rabbit hunters claim that the three different kinds of sounds, when the dogs are baying, denote different grades of strain in the hounds. There is the short snappish yelp of the hound of low degree; the whining, yet almost percussive howl which marks the dog of fair and even good points; then there is that long-drawn, deep-mouthed baying which leaves that ancestral war-whoop far behind

"The wolf's long howl on Ounalaska's shore.”

This can be heard far away, and denotes the hound of highest strain. I dislike them all, but this specially exaggerated wolfish baying is to me indescribably dismal. But judgments differ. Doubtless the devotee hears music in the frenzy of the howling dervish. I knew the father of a necessitous family. He kept one of these fiendishly accomplished brutes. The man must have had not an ear but two, for music, the one sa a pietist in church, the other as an enthusiast afield; for he said to a fellow sport: "In meetin' I have my favorite hymn, but the sound of that hound when he has nosed a rabbit, is to me real heavenly music!" As the poor miner declared, when half dazed over the death of his chum, this whole business is "too technical for me!"

I am so much pleased with the sight of little gray-back in the orchard near my study. With no dog near, he is in an interesting repose, and the scene is innocent and pretty. In the confidence of safety, it squats, snips off at its base a dandelion leaf, then sits up, and enjoys the crispy dainty. What a picture-ears erect and wide open; and that nibbling or clipping diminution of the leaf, those soft staring eyes, and that funny winking mug. Now for that habit of circumspection. Poised on its hind feet, with neck a little stretched, how those lustrous eyes survey the situation, while the ears are set erect and expanded to catch. the slightest sound. Ah! it has heard something, and off it goes at almost flying speed, bearing that cottony caudal tuft aloft behind it. If for mere display that white cockade may suggest a spice of vanity in rabbit life; but if from other motives it may hint at some serious verities in its experience. If it be the "white feather," who will blame timidity where every hand is

hostile? if a flag of truce, it has never been regarded. How much this little manimal has to do in sustaining the faunal balance in the east! To how many forms of life is it a food supply -to the creeping reptiles, the raptores of the birds, the rapacia of beasts, and even all-rapacious man. “Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God." Such is the rectitude of existence that whether beast or man, “no one liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself."

"The whole temporal show related royally,

And built up to eterne significance,

Through the open arms of God."

But why tempt the depths? So here endeth this memoir of "little cotton tail."

-:0:

THE PALEOZOIC ALLIES OF NEBALIA.

HAVING

BY A. S. PACKARD, JR.

[AVING studied the anatomy and development of Nebalia, we are prepared to compare it with a group of fossil forms which are scattered through the older Palæozoic rocks from the lowest Silurian to the Carboniferous. In a brief article1 Mr. Salter, nearly twenty years since, sketched out the characters and showed the relationship of Ceratiocaris and a number of allied forms to Nebalia in the following paragraph:

"Before the structure of Ceratiocaris was known, of which genus a reduced figure is here given, the rostral portion of Peltocaris could not have been understood. But a reference to the accompanying series of wood-cuts will show that a tolerably broad rostrum, placed in the same relative position, occurs in Ceratiocaris. In the recent Nebalia it is fixed, and in Dithyrocaris and other genera it is perhaps yet to be discovered. Again, Ceratiocaris, together with its movable rostrum, has a bivalved shell, yet habitually keeps its valves half closed, as I learn from perfect specimens."

Salter then enumerates the characteristics of the fossil genera, beginning with Hymenocaris, which he considers the more generalized type, and in the wood-cuts, which we partly here produce, shows the geological succession of these genera, which also serves as a genealogical table. He regards them as Phyllopods, associating with them Estheria and Apus, regarding the latter as 1On Peltocaris, a new genus of Silurian Crustacea, by J. W. Salter, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. xix, 1863, p. 87.

2 Our Fig. 1.