PHiLLiPS.^O;i Babbit-disease. 433 



report, will do well to think over what I am about to say, and 

 to amend his summary of conclusions at the end of his interim 

 report lately presented to Parliament : — 



The rabbit appears to have started in Africa. Negro 

 legends all point to it as the cunning animal, just as our 

 legends point to the fox. From Africa it passed to Asia and 

 Europe, as European lands emerged from the sea. (I consider 

 Africa the oldest continent, geologically, and the negroes the 

 oldest race of men, ethnologically.) From Asia it passed 

 into America, or the jack-rabbit there may have been in 

 America coterminous with the rabbit's existence in Africa or 

 Asia. With the rabbit went the stoat, weasel, ferret, cat, dog, 

 fox, wolf, and other natural enemies. I am speaking now of 

 many thousand years ago — long before men ever appeared upon 

 the face of the earth, but still while the four present great 

 continents were continents, and Australia and New Zealand 

 isolated. 



And these animals which we call the natural enemies were 

 specially sent by nature to watch the rabbit and prey upon it, 

 and prevent its excessive increase. Thus the common vital 

 force always acts. One order of creation is not allowed to 

 take possession of the earth — another checks it ; and so the 

 balance of utility is preserved. 



Sir James Hector, thinking as I think, stated some months 

 since that soon there would be no rabbits in New Zealand. I 

 would point out to Sir James that in saying that he has gone 

 too far. Nature checks excessive increase, it is true, but nature 

 does not willingly allow any one order of creation to be ex- 

 terminated. On many an estate at home there will still be 

 found, after a thousand years of experience, the fox, the stoat, 

 the weasel, the dog, the cat, and the rabbit side by side. 

 Trap off the ground-vermin, as it is called, and the rabbit will 

 rapidly increase ; so that any idea of our depending entirely 

 upon bladder-worm or any disease must be abandoned. The 

 rabbit will never be exterminated now from the lands of x\us- 

 tralasia. Nor is it advisable for us to exterminate it. 



But there is a great distinction between the rabbit as an 

 animal and the rabbit as a pest. Nature carefully makes this 

 distinguishment in all living tilings. Only those things came 

 to this planet of use to it, as its climatic conditions proved 

 favourable to their reception, and each thing carried with it 

 its own check from excessive increase. The general check 

 (this course of reasoning supposes space to be filled with germs, 

 and other planets inhabited) is a worm of some kind. For 

 when any living thing becomes too thick — be it man, sheep, 

 rabbit, pig, horse, ox, or other animal — immediately the land 

 becomes infected by the excessive excreta of itself or its 

 natural check. I rather fancy that its own excreta first starts 



