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Show 598 MR. BARRETT-HAMILTON ON LEPUS VARIABILIS. [May 16, Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, F.Z.S., exhibited a skin of the Varying Hare (Lepus variabilis) from Nairn, Scotland, for which he was indebted to the courtesy of the Earl of Cawdor. The skin was in the interesting moulting-stage of spring, and clearly showed that the darker colour of summer was due to the casting off of the white hairs of winter and their replacement by a new set of hairs of the dark summer colour. Mr. Barrett-Hamilton was therefore glad to be able to corroborate the observations of Mr. J. A. Allen1 on the American White Hare (Lepus americanus Erxl.), at least so far as concerned the spring change of colour. Mr. Allen's paper had been written partly with a view to combat the view, which once widely held, that the change of colour in the Varying Hare was due, at least in part, to an actual change of the pigment of the hairs, which theory had been advocated in an elaborate paper by Assistant-SurgeonF. H . Welch2, and had been largely utilized by no less an authority than Mr. E. B. Poulton as the chief basis for his theory on the " Variable Protective Resemblances in Vertebrates " 3. Another point of interest was the late date at which the spring moult takes place (the Hare in question was received early in May). The date of the spring moult in the more southern countries inhabited by the Variable Hare, such as the South of Ireland, was no earlier, so that the spring change at all events was apparently unaffected by climatic conditions, although in the south the amount of whiteness assumed was very much less than in the north. The whole seasonal change in fact seemed to be normally quite out of control of the animal, and also, it seemed, not subject to the direct influence of the weather (at least not to such changes of temperature as might be experienced in different parts of the British Isles), the experiments of Captain Ross4 on a Hudson's Bay Lemming notwithstanding; and Mr. Barrett-Hamilton was aware of several instances in which Variable Hares transported from Scotland and from Irish mountains to southern and low-lying regions continued for some seasons to appear in their northern garb of snowy whiteness. This persistence of the habit of turning white, even in unsuitable conditions, together with the lateness of the moult, resulted frequently in the curious spectacle of a mountain Hare running about in all its conspicuous arctic livery under the bright rays of an April or May sun. After a few years such imported Hares, or more probably their offspring, ceased to turn completely white, and the breed assumed the appearance of the ordinary Hares of the southern locality to which they had been transported. The persistence of this change even under unsuitable conditions, together with the lateness of the spring moult (owing to 1 " O n the Seasonal Change of Colour in the Varying Hare (Lepus americanus Erxl.)." Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. vol. vi. art. iv. pp. 107-128, May 7 1894 2 P. Z. 8., 1869, pp. 2*28-236. 3 See ' The Colours of Animals,' chap. vii. Intern. Sci. Ser. vol. lxvii. 1890. 4 See Appendix to Second Voyage, p. xiv (1835), and ' Bell's British Quadrupeds,' ed. i. p. 199 (1874). |