MARCH 39 



that the Roman colonist imported them for food. 

 Escapes from the hutches and pens would readily make 

 themselves at home on the cultivated lands which were 

 surrounded by forest. That they are not indigenous to 

 the British Isles may be inferred from two pieces of 

 negative evidence first, that no remains of the rabbit 

 have been identified in peat or any other post-tertiary 

 deposits ; and second, that, while the hare has its name 

 in the old Gaelic and Welsh languages, there is none 

 for the rabbit, showing that the Celtic population at 

 the time of the Roman invasion were not acquainted 

 with the animal. The modern Gaelic coinean and 

 Welsh owning are merely adaptations of the Middle 

 English coni, conig and coning our coney. 



Grievous as is the perennial damage inflicted in this 

 country by rabbits, and serious as is the expense of 

 protecting agricultural crops and young woods from 

 their depredation, it sinks almost to insignificance 

 beside what farmers have suffered through the intro- 

 duction of this rodent to Australia and New Zealand. 

 Writing in the Zoologist in 1888, 1889 and 1894, 

 Professor Strong graphically described the havoc 

 wrought in those lands by rabbits, which, like many 

 other animals taken from the northern to the southern 

 hemisphere, multiply there with redoubled energy. 



' I do not think,' says he, ' that any one who has not 

 witnessed with his own eyes the appalling numbers of these 

 pests can appreciate the terror with which the settlers regard 

 them. In Victoria they threatened to eat out the first 

 settlers on the rich western district. Messrs. Robertson of 

 Colac spent over .20,000 in exterminating them. They 



