, but it was a _snow-white_ one.
The first albino Cottontail I had ever seen, and apparently the first
albino Cottontail that[C] Ranger had ever seen. Dogs are not supposed to
be superstitious, but on that occasion Ranger behaved exactly as though
he thought that he had seen a ghost.

A NARROW-GAUGE MULE--THE PRAIRIE HARE

[Illustration]

One has to see this creature with its great flopping ears, and its
stiff-legged jumping like a bucking mule, to realize the aptness of its
Western nickname.

As it bounds away from your pathway its bushy snow-white tail and the
white behind the black-tipped ears will point out plainly that it is
neither the Texas Jackrabbit nor the Rocky Mountain Cottontail, but the
White-tailed Jackrabbit, the finest of all our Hares.

I have met it in woods, mountains, and prairies, from California to
Manitoba and found it the wildest of its race and almost impossible of
approach; _except_ in the great exceptional spot, the Yellowstone Park.
Here in the August of 1912 I met with two, close to the Mammoth Hot
Springs Hotel. At a distance of thirty feet they gave me good chances to
take pictures, and though the light was very bad I made a couple of
snaps. Fifteen years ago, when first I roamed in the Park, the Prairie
Hare was exceedingly rare, but now, like so many of the wild folk, it
has become quite common. Another evidence of the efficacy of protection.

This silvery-gray creature turns pure white in the winter, when the snow
mantle of his range might otherwise make it too conspicuous.

THE BUMP OF MOSS THAT SQUEAKS

No matter how horrible a certain climate or surroundings may seem to us,
they are sure to be the ideal of some wild creature, its very dream of
bliss. I suppose that slide rock, away up in cold, bleak, windy country
above the timber-line, is absolutely the unloveliest landscape and most
repulsive home ground that a man could find in the mountains and yet it
is the paradise, the perfect place of a wonderful little creature that
is found on the high peaks of the Rockies from California to Alaska.

It is not especially abundant in the Yellowstone Park, but it was there
that first I made its acquaintance, and Easterners will meet with it in
the great Reserve more often than in all other parts of its range put
together.

[Illustration]

As one reaches the Golden Gate, near Mammoth Hot Springs, many little
animals of the Ground-squirrel group are seen running about, and fro