x\v. GKOUXD GAME SHOOTING (PART II) 413 



question was surrounded with wire netting in a way 

 that made it impossible for a rabbit to climb in or 

 out, a careful count was taken of every rabbit the 

 wood contained when they were killed ; but, instead 

 of the hundred or two we all expected to find, there 

 \\vre only twenty-three. 



In this case the rabbits when quite small had 

 zed through the mesh of the netting and after- 

 wards remained inside the covert. 



I have often been told of certain trees and shrubs 

 that are supposed to be safe from the attacks of 

 rabbits, and I have tried, I believe, all of them, but 

 my experience is that, rather than starve, rabbits will, 

 in severe wintry weather, eat anything that grows or 

 they can find, except perhaps an iron railing. The 

 last tree, in my experience, that rabbits will attack, 

 and then only when they are reduced to desperate 



its of hunger, is the aider-, and as the alder shoots 

 up faster than any tree we have, will grow in dry or 

 wet soil, makes fairly good cover, and is a very sale- 

 able timber to fill up a wood with, it is well worth 

 planting. 



In the exceptionally severe frost of 1889-90, not 

 a single alder of many thousand young ones was 

 barked by rabbits in a wood in which I had just 

 planted these trees, though every other young tree 

 with which the alders were intermixed was nibbled or 

 killed by the rabbits. 



