36 • FACT AGAINST FICTIOX. 



tlie number of rabbits lie himself kept, but even 

 his neighbours were loud in their complaints of 

 the nuisance he, their brother -agriculturist, occa- 

 sioned. To such an extent have I found rabbits 

 preserved by tenant-farmers, when they were 

 given the right to kill them, that in the orchards 

 attached to the farm I have known large log 

 piles built up on purpose for the rabbits to breed 

 in ; and upon notice of a repeal of the permission 

 to kill rabbits, the tenant-farmer has requested 

 me to let him keep his rabbits until the following 

 spring, in order that he riur/kt he ahle to take off 

 the crop of rabbits he had so long fostered ; in fact, 

 the head of rahhits he had been getting vp for 

 years ! I have often stood on a tenant-farmer's 

 devastated field, and wondered to myself what 

 he would have said had his landlord's or my 

 rabbits caused half so much destruction ! 



Then, again, as to the unrestricted leave to keep 

 greyhounds and to course hares, restricted merely 

 so far that the coursing was to be confined to the 

 proper season, beginning in November and ending 

 on the 1st of March. In such cases, when the hares 

 have been so constantly disturbed as to leave their 

 '^ forms " out upon the fields, I have known the 



