72 THE RABBIT 



Another correspondent wrote : — ' In a season like 

 the past summer, when grass was abundant, our ground 

 would have produced at least 150 rabbits to the acre. 

 As it is, fifty to the acre have not consumed one 

 quarter of the pasture. Large tracts of it are still 

 untouched. ^50 rank was the herbage in August and 

 September that about thirty cattle had to be turned 

 in to help to eat it down.' 



On the other hand, rabbit warrens which are used 

 for sporting purposes only, and are not shot until 

 November, will not bear ten rabbits to the acre 

 without serious damage. Warrens which are farmed, 

 and snared or netted from the end of September 

 onward, are not so unremunerative ; but the gun should 

 be discarded until the very last. 



As to the effect of rabbits on pasture, a practical 

 observer, after three years' experience, has remarked 

 that ' a rabbit puts nothing back into the ground, 

 though he extracts the utmost from it. He leaves 

 little manure on the grass, and his droppings have 

 little manurial value.' This is not the case where 

 rabbits are farmed in hutches, and the hutches are 

 periodically shifted. Major Morant, in his ' Profitable 

 Rabbit Farming,' writes : — ' It is generally believed 

 that the manure of rabbits injures the ground ; but 

 this is a great mistake : it is as beneficial as that of 



