586 THE CHINCHILLA. 
drink, but obtain the needful moisture from the green herbage on which they feed. But 
in the open country, they always feed while the dew lies heavily upon every blade, 
which is never the case with the green food with which our domestic Rabbits are supplied. 
Moreover, we feed our Rabbits very largely on bran, pollard, oats, and other dry nourish- 
ment which they do not obtain in their normal state of freedom. The mother Rabbit 
instinctively licks her young when they are born, and is evidently liable to an exceeding 
desire for liquid nourishment which prompts her to eat anything that may assuage her 
burning thirst. A Rabbit, which had already killed and begun to eat one of her offspring, 
ue been seen to leave the half-eaten body and to run eagerly to a pan of water which 
yas placed in her hutch. It may easily be supposed that when an animal is obliged to 
afford a constant supply of liquid nourishment to her young, she is forced to imbibe a 
sufficiency of fluid to enable her to comply with the ever recurrmg demands of her 
offspring. 
Rabbits are terribly destructive animals, as is too well known to all residents near a 
warren, and are sad depredators in field, garden, and plantation, destroying in very 
wantonness hundreds of plants which they do not care to eat. They do very great damage 
to young trees, delighting in stripping them of the tender bark as far as they can reach 
while standing on their hind feet. Sometimes they eat the bark, but in many cases they 
leave it in heaps upon the ground, having chiselled it from the tree on which it grew, and 
to which it afforded nourishment, merely for the sake of exercising their teeth and keeping 
them in proper order, just as a cat delights in clawing the legs of chairs and tables. 
When the Rabbits have beeun to devastate a “plantation, they will continue their 
destructive amusement until they have killed every tree in the place, unless they are 
effectually checked. There are only two methods of saving the trees—one of killing all 
the Rabbits, and the other by making them disgusted with their employment. The latter 
plan is generally the most feasible, and can be attained by painting each tree with a strong 
infusion of tobacco, mixed with a sufficiency of clay and other substances to make it 
adhere to the bark, This mixture should be copiously applied to the first three feet of 
every tree, so that the Rabbit cannot find any portion of the bark that is not impregnated 
with the nauseous compound, and is an effectual preservative against their attacks. 
In their normal state of freedom, Rabbits feed exclusively on vegetable food, but in 
domestication they will eat a very great variety of substances. Many of my own Rabbits 
were very fond of sweetmeats, and would nibble a piece of hardbake with great enjoyment, 
though they were always much discomposed by the adhesive nature of their strange diet, 
and used to shake their heads violently from side to side when they found themselves 
unable to disengage their teeth. They would also eat tallow candles, a fact which I 
discovered accidentally, by seeing them devour a candle-end that had fallen out of an old 
lantern. These curious predilections were the more unaccountable, because the animals 
were most liberally supplied with food, and were also permitted to run in the kitchen 
garden for a limited time daily, and to feed upon the growing lettuces, parsley, carrots, 
and other vegetables, as they pleased. 
Asa general fact, the Rabbit has a ereat antipathy to the hare, so that the two animals 
are seldom, if ever, seen in close proximity. The possibility of a hybrid progeny 
between the two species was, until late years, entirely denied. There are, however, several 
accidental instances of such a phenomenon, and in every case the father has been a Rabbit 
and the mother a hare. There are many examples of young Rabbits which possess much 
of the colouring and general aspect of the hare, but these are almost invariably the offspring 
of domesticated Rabbits which have been turned into a warren. 
In its native state, the fur of the Rabbit is of nearly uniform brown, but when the 
animal is domesticated, its coat assumes a variety of hues, such as pure white, jetty black, 
pied, dun, slaty-grey, and many other tints. 
The CHINCHILLA, so well known for its exquisitely soft and delicate fur, belongs to the 
group of animals which are known to zoologists under the title of Jerbdidee, and which are 
remarkable for the great comparative length of their hinder limbs, and their long, hair- 
clothed tails. 
