166 Practical Game Preserving. 



admitted, do considerable damage if allowed to become 

 numerous, but on a well conducted game preserve this is 

 unnecessary and undesirable. Rabbits, per se, are looked 

 down upon by the "big guns" in the shooting world, but 

 they are thought a good deal of by keepers, whose perquisite 

 they generally are. If one wants to make money or pay 

 expenses by them, it is easy enough to form a small warren, 

 or to fence in a few scores of acres of wood, copse, &c., 

 without having them widely dispersed, doing damage in all 

 directions, not only against the tenants' crops, but the 

 owner's hedgerows, banks and fields. But then it is said 

 they are useful to feed the foxes, and if foxes get rabbits 

 they will not seek after the birds. They will, however, 

 though not so much as when there are few or no rabbits. 

 It must be borne in mind, too, that the rabbit does not live 

 on young corn alone, that one cannot catch young rabbits, 

 which do most mischief, in snares, nor yet old ones in traps 

 not set in rabbit runs, nor would it pay the farmer to be 

 continually on the look out, or have some " duly authorised 

 person " on the look out for him, to kill his share of the 

 rabbits, to which he has a concurrent right. The preserver, 

 notwithstanding the Ground Game Act, has the ground 

 game in his own hands, and if he is wise he will, in his 

 own interest, keep the rabbits the hares are not worth 

 talking about within proper and desirable limits. A farm 

 without a few rabbits would be a melancholy sight indeed, 

 and the farmer would be the first to protest. 



The duties of the game preserver, as far as regards rabbits, 

 demand no specification. The same operations which are 

 required to produce a head of winged game will conduce to 



