The aptness of the common name, varying hare, is easily understood, since it applies to the seasonal change of color, brought about by the shedding of the coat during the moult. The term “snowshoe rabbit” is derived from the long, broad hind feet of the animal, Nature’s wise provision which permits rapid and efficient progress over deep, soft snow. The food preferences and habitats of the snowshoe rabbits are similar. Both species prefer the dense cover of swamps and thickets, which provide excellent protection from hawks and owls above as well as avenues of escape from coyotes, foxes, and other predators on the ground. Every large predator is the enemy of the snowshoe. Green plants, grasses, and clover make up the bulk of the food in summer. The winter diet consists chiefly of the bark, buds and twigs of various trees and shrubs. Coniferous foliage is often eaten. WESTERN BUSHY-TAILED WOOD RAT _Neotoma cinerea occidentalis_ Baird This large, gray-brown rat (head and body nine inches, tail eight inches), can not be mistaken for any other park animal. It closely resembles a several times magnified white-footed mouse, except that the tail is so well-haired as to be almost like that of a squirrel. The ears are conspicuous, the eyes large and lustrous, the feet, underparts, and underside of the tail are dull white. _Specimens in park collection:_ RNP-19 and RNP-20, Longmire Museum, Park Headquarters. The wood rats are found over the western United States, northward into western Canada, and in some of the southeastern and mid-western states. The Mount Rainier species inhabits southern British Columbia, all of Washington and Oregon, northern California and Nevada, and most of Idaho. In the park it is found from park boundaries to forest line, rarely higher, and is not common, although Taylor and Shaw (1919) found it “unusually abundant in the timber along Tahoma Creek,” and recorded one individual at Camp Muir (10,000 feet). Every woodsman has a fund of “pack rat” stories, nearly all of them emphasizing the thieving propensities of the animal, and every story has a basis, at least, in fact, because the wood rat will usually pick up and carry away anything about the camp that strikes his fancy, if such articles are not beyond his physical powers. At times these treasures may be found cached away in a bulky pile of dead twigs, leaves and other debris in some rock crevice, but the wood rats seem to place little dependence upon these “nests” as a place of refuge, preferring to retreat into a more adequately protected spot in the rock mass itself.