The young of the cottontails are born in nests made of dead grasses warmly lined with fur from the mother’s body. If above ground the nest is placed in a little depression and so artfully concealed by a covering of dead grasses that it can be discovered only by accident. When caught, young cottontails utter little cries of alarm; the wounded adults sometimes shriek in terror. From the early settlement of the United States to the present day cottontails have been so abundant that they have served as a valuable source of our game food supply. They are hunted with guns and with dogs, as well as being snared and trapped. Enormous numbers, running into the millions, are killed in this country yearly, but they are so prolific that they hold their own in a surprising degree. Their abundance in many places, however, has made them a serious pest to agriculture. They eat growing alfalfa and other forage plants, many kinds of cultivated vegetables, young grape vines, and nursery stock and even kill orchard trees by gnawing the bark from the base of the trunks. As a result those who suffer from their depredations consider them pests to be destroyed, while others look upon them as desirable game animals to be protected by law. As game animals the cottontails furnish some of the most delightful and interesting sport available to American hunters. The scurrying zigzag rush of a cottontail for the nearest shelter is so full of energetic motion that it always excites a pleasurable thrill in the observer, and even the keenest sportsman has so friendly a feeling for these little animals that the escape of one of them from an unsuccessful shot nearly always leaves a feeling of humorous amusement. The cottontails have a secure place in American literature and folklore. Who has not read the wonder stories of the adventures of “Brer Rabbit” and ever after had a warmer feeling of fellowship for his kind? The presence of cottontails is a source of pleasure to children of all ages, and their disappearance from the wild life of a locality creates a more deeply felt blank than would the passing of many a nobler animal. =THE MARSH RABBIT= (=Sylvilagus palustris= and its relatives) (_For illustration, see page 511_) The marsh rabbit, or “pontoon,” as it is known in Georgia, is a distinctively American species allied to the cottontails, but distinguished from them by its more heavily proportioned body, smaller ears, shorter and slenderer legs and feet, and shorter, nearly unicolored tail. Its only close relative in the United States is the swamp rabbit, known in Alabama as the “cane-cutter.” These two species appear to be members of a Tropical American group of which other members are the wood rabbits of Mexico, Central and South America. The distribution of the group was probably at one time continuous, but a change to arid conditions in northeastern Mexico and Texas isolated the two species remaining in this country.