Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1910 — MAINE RABBIT A HARE [ARTICLE]

MAINE RABBIT A HARE

lepui Amerlcanua the Species Found in Different Parts of State. Last August, when the Federal biological survey Issued bulletin No. 29, giving an exact and scientific description of ninety-seven distinct species of hares and rabbits Inhabiting North America between the Panama canal and the north pole, residents of Washington County, Maine, who send more rabbits to the Boston market than all the rest of New England combined, opened their eyes widely and kept them open because In all Maine, from Allagash plantation In northern Aroostook to Kittery at the southwest, and to Eastport at the southeast, old hunters and men of science unite In declaring there is but one species known to run wild —the great northern hare or lepus Americanus of naturalists, the first species on the continent to receive official recognition from science, it having been described and named as long ago as 1777. Indeed, asserts the Bangor (Maine) Commercial, the discovery and naming of new species went on very slowly. In 1840 there were twelve known species within the area named, which number was Increased to thirteen by Bachman In 1851, though Prof. Baird of the Smithsonian' Institution put It back to twelve again In 1857, where it remained without change until 1881, after which scores of eminent scientific men had rabbits or hares named in their honor., H. W. Nelson, author of the bulletin, who has devoted years to the work, says no instance is known where any species Imported to this country from Europe or Asia has escaped from restraint and gone wild. The little brown “bunnies” Imported from England for purposes of dissection and the trying out of new poisons and antitoxins, are still kept In wired Inclosures near every medical school and experimental laboratory In Amerinq, and though analogous forms are found burrowing among the hillocks of scrub oak from Salem, Mass., to the southern boundary of Connecticut, none have escaped from human control in sufficient numbers to form self-perpet-uating colonies. Less than ten years ago, when the style In Belgian hares fell away and the former craze dwindled to scattering hutches, It was predicted by farmers that a plague of Belgian hares would overrun New England worse than the rabbit invasion of Australia, but the fears were groundless and America has yet to find a Belgian hare running wild. According to the Nelson definition, the distinction between rabbits and hares Iles In the fact that hares make their homes In forms above ground and bring forth their young with the eyes open and fully clad In hair, while rabbits abide In burrows under the ground, and the young when born have their eyes closed and the bodies entirely devoid of hair or fur.