CASTRATED RABBITS KILLING. 195 



they were no doubt admissible, being a species of 

 live stock of great consequence as national food, 

 and in universal demand, thence entitled to exhi- 

 bition, like other stock, in their utmost perfection of 

 proof. My lord was satisfied. 



CASTRATED rabbits might be fattened, no doubt, 

 to the weight of upwards of ten or even fifteen 

 pounds, at six or seven months old. The operation 

 should be performed at the age of six or seven 

 weeks. I have not succeeded at castrating the rab- 

 bit, but am informed it is successfully practised in 

 the land of capons, namely, Sussex, near Chichester, 

 where, on the average, not one in three hundred is 

 lost by the operation, which is performed at five or 

 six weeks old. With respect to QUANTITIES of corn 

 consumed in fattening ; August, 1813, killed a 

 young buck, which weighed three pounds, fit for 

 the spit ; it was put up in good case, and was only 

 one month in feeding, consuming not quite four 

 quarts of oats, with hay, cabbage, lucerne, bunias 

 orientalis, and chicory; the skin, silver, and black, 

 worth four-pence. 



In SLAUGHTERING full-grown rabbits, after the 

 usual stroke upon the neck, the throat should be 

 perforated upwards towards the jaws with a small 

 pointed knife, in order that the blood may be eva- 

 cuated, which would otherwise settle in the head 

 and neck. It is an abomination to kill poultry by 

 the slow and torturing method of bleeding to death, 

 hung up by the heels, the veins of the mouth being 

 cut; but still more so the rabbit, which in that 

 situation utters horrible screams. The ENTRAILS 

 K 2 



