1 64 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



wash to protect trees from rabbits is fresh blood, which of course, 

 would have to be frequently renewed. As a better protection he recom- 

 mends wire screens. 19 Wagner recommends, as the best repellant wash 

 to protect trees from both deer and rabbits, one pound of blood-meal 

 to three gallons of water, repeated every two weeks. 20 



Though rabbits are partially protected by legal close seasons in many 

 parts of eastern United States, they often do great damage locally to 

 garden and field crops and orchard trees. Especially destructive are the 

 abundant jack rabbits in some parts of the West. Lime-sulphur and other 

 washes about the lower parts of the trunks of trees are sometimes help- 

 ful. Trees may also be protected by woven-wire cylinders, as in case of 

 the beaver, and properly constructed fences of the same material will 

 protect gardens. Rabbits are easily shot, trapped or poisoned. In the 

 West, organized "drives" of jack rabbits are often conducted, when 

 numbers of men, women and children, without firearms, surround a 

 large area and drive all the rabbits toward a central point, where they 

 are destroyed. In California 25,000 rabbits were killed in three months 

 on a tract of 48 square miles, 8000 on a small ranch in nine days and 

 40,000 in drives near Bakersfield in two months. Seven drives in one 

 Idaho county netted 15,728 rabbits, and drives in five other counties re- 

 sulted in 5500, 17,800, 20,000, 19,000 and 10,000 rabbits respectively. 

 A big hunt in South Dakota resulted in 7550 white-tailed jack-rabbits 

 in one pile. 21 



Most of the publications cited in the footnotes to this chapter empha- 

 size the importance of the natural enemies of injurious mammals and 

 the need of encouraging such enemies. As this subject is discussed 

 somewhat in two of the preceding chapters, it need be mentioned only 

 briefly here. Among the active enemies of rodents are many species 

 of hawks and owls, crows, gulls, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, weasels, 

 skunks and snakes. Notwithstanding all the information concerning 

 the usefulness of most species of hawks and owls that has for years 

 been disseminated among farmers and hunters by the United States 



19 Pellett, The cottontail, Forest and Stream, Feb. 25, 1911, p. 291, cited by Seton, 

 Lives of game animals. 



20 Wagner, A spray for preventing damage by deer, California Fish and Game, i, 

 241, 1915. 



21 Palmer, The jack rabbits of the United States, U. S. Biol. Surv. Bull, No. 8, 

 1897. Bell, Death to the rodents, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1920, pp. 421-438. 

 Bailey, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 49, pp. 134-144, 1926. Lantz, Cottontail rabbits in rela- 

 tion to trees and farm crops, Farmers' Bull., No. 702, 1912. Silver, The European 

 hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas) in North America, Jour. Agric. Research, xxvm. 

 II33-H37, 1924- 



