The rabbit has its wild enemies, ever watchful, ever close on its trail. The hawk, the mink, the weasel, the fox, the lynx, and others are rabbit hunters. Besides his quick hearing, and his swiftness, Br'er Rabbit has a wonderful power of becoming invisible. His nondescript colour, combined with his ability to "freeze," serve him as well as a cloak of darkness. The cotton-tail rabbit is commonest in the Middle and Southern states, while his bigger cousin, the varying hare, overlaps the rabbit's territory in the colder parts, and takes his place in the most Northern states. The varying hare is called also the snow-shoe rabbit and the white hare, but in summer he is dull russet brown. You may have heard of the wonderful change of colour of this and other animals. Interesting stories are told of the sudden blanching of the fur, of its turning white, "in a single night," like the locks of the prisoner of Chillon. Not a word of truth in that story. Why do people, whose only fitness for telling stories lies in their having an imagination, make up such yarns about real things? They could invent an animal and then tell as many wonderful tales as they liked and nobody would be deceived. The truth about animals is wonderful enough. If writers would only take pains to find out the truth instead of repeating fancies! Suppose the early ancestor of the white hare had a grayish-brownish coat, just the thing to protect him from his enemies in a world all full of grayish-brownish things. But one day there came a snow storm, and all the gray-brown things were covered with whiteness, except the poor hare. Suddenly he became the most noticeable object in the woods. Then all his neighbours saw him and wanted him, and mostly they got him. It was about then that the hare began to be the "varying hare." A law of nature came to his rescue. Some hares there were which were not so dark coloured as others. They may have been longer winded and swifter footed, too, but anyhow they escaped and lived to bring families into the world. As like breeds like, these young hares took after their parents, and because they were lighter coloured in the winter they in turn escaped and carried this peculiarity into the next generation. It took endless years, and innumerable generations of hares, varying this way and that to fulfill this natural law, and fix the habit. But now that it is fixed we may well view it with wonder, and call it an example of the law of the "survival of the fittest." How is the change brought about? Just as the chickens and the birds moult, and the horse sheds, so do the rabbits. Their summer coats are thinner and brown. One by one the brown hairs fall out in the fall till finally the new coat is there, which is white. It is not like the human hair changing from brown to white. In the fall and then again in the spring there is a time when the varying hare is a variegated hare, his coat being mottled with white and brown.