ing-pole,
thus usually ending its sufferings. When thus caught the flesh is
tender and sweet; but when caught by a leg the flesh is flabby and
tasteless, the reason being that when caught by the neck the rabbit is
killed almost instantly; but when snared by a leg it hangs struggling
in pain for hours before it finally bleeds at the nose and dies, or is
frozen to death. When the latter happens, however, the rabbit is
usually thrown to a dog or used for trap bait. The reason Oo-koo-hoo
set the rabbit snares was not so much for present needs as to provide
meals for the hunter while on his future rounds; also to keep on hand a
goodly supply of trap bait.

Expert hunters, when they have time, prefer to hunt rabbits by calling
them. In the rutting season they imitate the love-call of the female,
and in other seasons they mimic the cries of the young; in either case,
the unsuspecting animals come loping from all directions, and the
hunter bowls them over with fine shot. Calling takes much practice,
but when the hunter has become an adept, it is the easiest and the
quickest way of catching them.

In relation to setting snares for rabbits, Mrs. Wm. Cornwallis King,
the wife of a well-known Hudson's Bay Company's chief trader, once had
an unusual experience. She had set for rabbits a number of snares made
of piano wire, and when visiting them one morning she was astonished
and delighted, too, to find caught in one of her snares a beautiful
silver fox; stranger still, the fox was caught by its tongue. As
usual, after investigation, the snow told the whole story in a graphic
way. It showed that the fox had been pursuing a rabbit, both going on
the full run, and the latter always dodging in the effort to escape
from its enemy. Finally, the rabbit had bolted past the snare, and the
panting fox, with its tongue hanging out, following close behind,
accidentally had touched its wet tongue against the wire, and the frost
of many degrees below zero had instantly frozen it there. Then the
fox, struggling to get free, had set off the snare, which closing on
its tongue had hauled it into the air, where it had hung with just the
tip of its tail and its hind toes resting on the snow. When Mrs. King
found it, it was dead.

That evening, when the fire sank low and we turned in, a pack of timber
wolves for fully an hour sang us a most interesting lullaby; such a
one, indeed, that it made the goose-flesh run up and down our backs--or