•314 Transactions. — Zoology. 



ground-vermin." If he wishes to reduce his rabbits the man 

 puts away the traps, and the ground- vermin flock in from the 

 lU'ighbouring lands and eat up the young ones. 



Austraha, Tasmania, and New Zealand must be placed in 

 an exactly similar position to England in this respect : there 

 must be so many ground- vermin against so many rabbits. 

 The balance of f)rey upon prey must be obtained, and we can 

 keep this balance at its minimum by the use of the four 

 diseases which assisted us to conquer the pest in South Wai- 

 rarapa. Professor Aldis estimates that one dog can distribute 

 900,000 tapeworm-eggs in one day ^ — ten dogs 9,000,000, 

 twenty dogs 18,000,000. How totally different a remedy this ! 

 how far removed from the rabbit-netting remedy so strongly 

 advocated just at present ! 



Eeferring for a moment to this rabbit-netting remedy, which, 

 certainly. Professor Thomas takes no notice of, I am told 

 that the leaders of the fencing movement in Canterbury and 

 Hawke's Bay say that they expect to keep the rabbits entirely 

 out of their provinces by its means. Let me tell the settlers 

 there that every acre of their lands, sooner or later, must pass 

 under the rabbits' feet. I advise them as strongly as I can to 

 trust not to their fences. 



Let me here explain fully niy opposition to rabbit-fencing 

 as a remedy against the rabbit-pest. x*\s I have said above, 

 directly I hear of a settler resorting to rabbit-netting I know 

 at once that the rabbits will be preserved in his district ; for 

 rabbit-netting means his ow^n sefish protection. For how can 

 the netting be any remedy against the rabbits swarming upon 

 the other side of the fence ? Of course it is none. As a tem- 

 porary stop it is useful, but it is no remedy. What the Eoyal 

 Commission in Australia asked for was some remedy against 

 the rabbit -pest. What the Eoyal Commission arrived at in 

 their report was that rabbit-netting was the proper remedy. 

 I immediately, in New Zealand, took up arms against that 

 report, and have steadily tried to expose its fallacy ; but the 

 task is almost herculean. The most intelligent of my neigh- 

 bours, to protect one year's grass, will resort to this rabbit- 

 netting, and totally neglect the turning-out of the natural 

 enemy or the spread of disease. Then he proceeds to poison, 

 hunt, and trap, and reduce the rabbit-pest i:pon his own 

 land, leaving it worse than ever iipon his neighbour's, and 

 utterly failing to reduce the future breeding-powers of his 

 own rabbits (the nati;ral enemies and disease alone doing 

 that). Of course, the doe-rabbits that he caiches and kills 

 do not breed ; but he puts nothing upon his run to check the 

 future increase of those doe-rabbits which he does not catch 

 and kill. In 1884, in my own mind, I condemned the use of 

 rabbit-netting as far as my own run was conperned. I would 



