WILD RABBIT FARMING 189 



disappear, and bereaved housewives, on comparing 

 notes, find a suspicious correspondence between the rise 

 in the prices offered by the advertising farmers and the 

 sudden loss of their household pets. In Australia, the 

 rabbit has learnt a new accomplishment. In California 

 it has forgotten an old one. The Australian rabbit has 

 developed long claws, and climbs the scrub with ease, 

 in order to eat the leaves when grass is scarce. In 

 California it has forgotten how to burrow ; and 

 recently a rising en masse of the inhabitants of a 

 rabbit-infested district succeeded by driving the crea- 

 tures by thousands into an inclosure, where they were 

 destroyed without a chance of escape. But in all the 

 Colonies and even in most parts of Germany, where 

 the people will not eat rabbits, declaring that the meat 

 was " too sweet " the rabbit is looked upon as a pest, 

 to be exterminated if possible, and so unremunerative 

 as food as not to pay the wages of the men employed 

 in its destruction. The " Ground Game Act," recently 

 passed in England, reflected some such general feeling 

 among our own middle and lower classes ; and in many 

 parts of the country where wild rabbits formerly 

 swarmed they have completely disappeared. The 

 contrary opinion, maintained within limits by Mr. 

 Simpson, comes with a certain recommendation from 

 the position and employment of its author. In the 

 first place, " he comes from Yorkshire," writing from 

 the park of Lord Wharncliffe, at Wortley Hall, near 

 Sheffield, where his experiments were made ; and in 

 the next he is a " wood-agent," or manager of growing 



