272 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
cent. till the plantations or woods are certified to be mature or 
marketable. 
(3) Risk of damage by rabbits is a very serious matter as regards 
young plantations and the natural regeneration of mature timber- 
crops,—so much so, in fact, as to often imperil the chance of 
plantations proving profitable. No one can possibly assess 
the total amount of loss annually occasioned by rabbits to 
agricultural crops, grass lands, young plantations, and coppices 
throughout the United Kingdom; but I venture to assert that 
it runs not merely into hundreds of thousands of pounds, but 
may possibly far exceed one million pounds sterling. 
In the conditions attached to gun-licenses it is expressly said 
that rabbits are not included among vermin; whereas it ought 
to be specified that rabbits are vermin, except in warrens 
expressly formed for their preservation, and properly enclosed 
with rabbit-proof wire-fencing to prevent their exit. 
If national encouragement is to be given to extensive planting, 
the rabbit question is really a very serious one.t Except in 
properly enclosed warrens, everyone should have the right to 
kill and take rabbits; there should no longer be private 
property in rabbits (outside of warrens); and the warren-owner 
and his tenant-occupier should conjointly be liable to be 
proceeded against in the County Court for any damage done 
to fields, pastures, woods or plantations by rabbits which have 
escaped out of any such wire-fenced warren. 
(4) Higher railway charges are made for the transport of 
home-grown timber than for the through booking of foreign 
timber. Where only comparatively small quantities of timber 
are in question, it is quite reasonable that there should be some 
difference ; but it should not be difficult to arrange (by legisla- 
tion, if necessary) that large quantities of timber (above a 
certain minimum) shall be conveyed at the same rate as is 
charged for foreign timber of a similar character. These 
preferential through charges on imported timber, and the 
system of measurement used by the railway companies, handicap 
home-grown timber heavily; and all the loss in its local value 
must ultimately fall on the landowner, because the prices paid 
by wood-merchants are based on what the timber will cost 
them delivered at the mill-yard or other destination. 
1 See also Zyansactions for 1906, Vol. XIX. Part I., page 104. 
