260 SMALL ANIMALS AND INSECTS. [Chap. IL 



and good standing engage in it, and form rabbit clubs, and exhibit their 

 stock for prizes. Some of the specimens imported from London, that we 

 have seen, were very beautiful. Some years ago, Francis Rotcli, of Butter- 

 nuts, Otsego County, N. Y., imported some of the best we have ever seen, 

 and bred them to a considerable extent, finding ready sale for all he chose 

 to dis]wse of in that way. 



We do not know of any large establishment in this country where rabbits 

 are bred for sale in market for food. The common American wild rabbit is 

 often seen in the New York market. 



TJabbits may be kept in very inexpensive hutches, and in tolerably close 

 confinement. Their feed in summer is clover and various green things. In 

 winter they M'ill eat grain, sweet apples, parsneps, and other roots, cabbage, 

 and a little sweet hay. A full-sized rabbit wants about a gill of oats night 

 and morning, with a piece of rutabaga or parsnep, or its equivalent, say a 

 quarter of a pound a day, and a little handful of hay. A doe, while suck- 

 ling her young, which is most of the time, should be fed high, say three gills 

 of oats a day, or wheat shorts, or pea meal, and roots and hay. Or in sum- 

 mer, upon almost anything that grows green, if given fresh. 



A dozen or fifteen years ago, we remember having seen in " The Boy's 

 Own Book" an elaborate treatise upon rabbit-breeding, and to that we refer 

 the boy who reads this and desires to go into the business. They will also 

 find frequent hints in agricultural papers, and in several books devoted to 

 fancy poultry breeding. From wbat we have said of the food which rabbits 

 consume, it will be easy to calculate whether keeping them will be profitable. 



Newsjjapers bound around trees, it is declared in an article before us, will 

 wholly pi'event depredations of rabbits, and also keep off the borers, and a 

 wrapper well tied on will last for months. The writer says : 



'• I find no other remedy necessary for either rabbit or borer. The wrap- 

 pers, if properly put on, keep whole through all the changes of our variable 

 winters. The trees are thus secure from damage by the rabbit. In the latter 

 part of spring and early part of summer, when the beetles of the Sajxrda 

 and the Buprcstis are about, a few eggs will be deposited in the axils of the 

 lower branches of trees, and at the tops of the paper wrappers. Even these 

 points of attack, however, can in general be successfully gilarded, by simply 

 depositing a small jjiece of brown soap in the main axils, after the season's 

 growth is well started, to be dissolved and washed down the stem by subse- 

 quent rains. 



" But I do not find it necessary to resort to this precaution ; for if eggs are 

 deposited at those points, I am certain to find the fact out, and make all 

 right the latter part of August and first part of September, when I go among 

 my young trees with a bucket of strong soap-suds and a hard scrubbing- 

 brush, for the purpose of giving them a good hard wash, such as would make 

 some people open their eyes with astonishment, and cutting out suckers or 

 small shoots that may have pushed through the papers, and renewing the 

 wrappers." 



