224 BABBITS 



part of Europe. The Spanish peninsula is their reputed 

 ancestral home, though there is a good deal of doubt in 

 this matter. In Scotland they existed in but few 

 places a hundred years ago, and lairds were foolish 

 enough to transplant them to their 'policies' as a 

 desirable acquisition. And as if matters were not bad 

 enough at home, we must needs inoculate our colonies 

 in the southern hemisphere with the plague. Nature, 

 who had confined the Leporidce or .JIare family to 

 the Palaearctic and Nearctic regions of the globe 

 (except a single species Lepus braziliensis found in 

 South America) has avenged this infringement of her 

 dispositions with widespread calamity. Thousands of 

 fertile acres have been converted into desert by the 

 swarming hordes. Messrs. Robertson of Colac, Victoria, 

 claim to have cleared their own ground at a cost of 

 20,000 by employing Scots trappers and building up 

 the burrows with bricks and mortar. Other people 

 imported foxes, ferrets, cats, stoats, and other foes of 

 the rabbits ; but bunny still nourishes, though much of 

 the interesting native fauna has disappeared. The very 

 dogs soon became indifferent, ceasing to pay any 

 attention to animals which their inordinate numbers 

 divested of all sporting interest. 



Mr. W. Rodier succeeded in ridding his land in New 

 South Wales of rabbits by a remarkable device. He 

 observed that whenever buck rabbits exceed the does 

 in number, they kill all the young ones, apparently to 

 prevent a new generation of rival suitors coming on 

 the scene. Then they persecute the does to such an 

 extent with their marital attentions that these cease 



