106 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



body just under the skin. Many of the rabbits also had tapeworm 

 larvae in large bunches of transparent fluid with white specks in 

 it under the skin and in the body cavities. Sometimes these bunches 

 were as large as a man's fist, and several of them on one side of 

 the rabbit's body seriously interfered with his speed in running. 

 In some of the individuals the body cavities were largely filled 

 with these cysts or groups of parasitic larvae. Other rabbits were 

 dying apparently from other diseases that were not parasitic. One 

 examined after the death struggle was found to have a greatly 

 enlarged heart filled up with white hard tissue, congested and 

 spotted liver, congested lungs, with many hemorrhagic spots, en- 

 larged and softened kidneys, and dark red muscle. Apparently 

 the most destructive disease, which carries off thousands of them 

 at times of their greatest abundance, is tularemia, a dangerous and 

 often fatal disease when conveyed to the human system through 

 careless handling of infected rabbits. The disease may be conveyed 

 not only by contact of the rabbit blood and body juices with the 

 hands or human skin, but by the bite of ticks and flies that have 

 been in contact with the rabbits. Experiments have shown that 

 the germs of tularemia are not destroyed in lightly cooked or rare 

 meat, but well-cooked rabbit meat may be safely eaten. 



One of the Bureau's field collectors, R. H. Becker, after collect- 

 ing series of specimens of these rabbits in 1916, at the height of an 

 epidemic among them, was taken with all the symptoms of tula- 

 remia infected finger, swollen glands, fever, and general debility, 

 supposed at the time to be from blood poisoning, and necessitating 

 hospital treatment at several periods during the summer. Com- 

 plete recovery was not until the following year, and since the dis- 

 covery of this disease there seems little doubt that his case was 

 tularemia. 



Protection from rabbits. Some of the means of defense against 

 the depredations of jack rabbits have been fencing, rabbit drives, 

 organized hunts, shooting, trapping, snaring, and poisoning. Fenc- 

 ing is effective if carefully done and used in connection with perma- 

 nent traps to capture the rabbits as they go through regular open- 

 ings or in the fence corners after they have obtained admittance to 

 the enclosure. At Riverside, a Mr. Fairman made a trap under 

 the fence enclosing his haystacks by digging a deep pit and cover- 

 ing it with a tilting cover so the rabbits would fall in as they passed 

 through this only opening in the fence. Sometimes he would take 

 out as many as 15 rabbits from this pit in the mornings and use 

 them to feed his hens, hogs, and dogs. At a ranch on Crooked 

 Creek in the Owyhee River Valley, H. H. Sheldon examined the 

 traps in the corners of a large field enclosed by rabbitprpof fence. 

 As fast as rabbits gained admittance they were driven into these 

 corral traps in the corners from which they escaped by a small door 

 into a small corral where they were killed with clubs. At each of 

 these points was a pile of carcasses which well substantiated the 

 ranchman's statement that he had killed 4,000 rabbits during the 

 summer by this method. 



Many of the ranchmen have reported shooting over 100 rabbits 

 a day with .22-caliber rifles. Near Crane one ranchman had shot 



