38 CONCERNING BABBITS 



owners and occupiers of land most dearly the rabbit 

 or the brown rat. Of these two evil beasts, the rabbit 

 must be reckoned the least objectionable, not only 

 because its flesh is excellent food, but because it is more 

 practicable to keep the race in check than it is in the 

 case of rats. Probably both rabbits and brown rats are 

 more numerous in the British Isles than any other wild 

 mammal; yet it is certain that neither of them is 

 indigenous ; both are undesirable aliens. The brown 

 rat (Mus decumanus) was unknown in Britain until the 

 eighteenth century. It arrived in this country in cargo 

 ships, and multiplied with such prodigious rapidity as 

 to reduce our native black rat to the neighbourhood of 

 extinction, for Mus rattus is no match either in strength 

 or fecundity to the abominable foreigner. 



As for the rabbit, it is believed that its original home 

 was the Spanish peninsula ; for it is as inhabiting that 

 land, the Balearic Isles, and Corsica that it receives 

 earliest notice in literature. Polybius, writing two 

 hundred years before Christ, said there were no hares 

 in Corsica, but plenty of animals resembling (KVVIK\OI) 

 them that burrowed in the earth. Strabo, writing one 

 hundred and fifty years later, described rabbits as 

 abounding in Spain, and it is interesting to note that 

 he mentioned that ferrets were employed in catching 

 them. He also stated that the farmers of Majorca and 

 Minorca had suffered such loss through depredation by 

 rabbits, that they petitioned the Roman Government 

 for grants of fresh land. 



It is not known, even approximately, when the rabbit 

 was first introduced to Britain. It is quite likely 



