PICAS AND HAKES. 



199 



tia' opposite bank in safety. Rabbits, from their numbers, do even more damage 



to young plantations than is inflicted by hares. The chief foes of these animals are 



weasels, stoats, and polecats, which either hunt them in the open, or attack them 



within the recesses of their subterranean haunts; the curious kind of paralysis 



which seems to seize the rabbit when pursued by one of these carnivores has been 



already mentioned under the heading of the stoat. 



Although now widely distributed, it is believed that the original 

 Distribution. , . . . a 



home of the rabbit was m the countries on both sides of the western 



portion of the Mediterranean, where it is still abundant at the present day. Thence 



it is considered to have spread northwards, and to have reached England and 



Ireland by human agency. In Scut land it has increased and spread enormously of 



late years, having been formerly but sparsely distributed, and unknown in the 



more northern parts of the country. On the continent its distribution is somewhat 



local: audit is unknown in the more northern and eastern parts of Europe. It 



should be observed that remains of rabbits occur in the caves of England in 



company with those of the mammoth and other extinct mammals, which would 



seem at first sight to disprove the view that these rodents are immigrants from the 



south. It is, however, quite probable that the association of the remains of the 



rabbit with those of extinct mammals may be due to its burrowing habits, 



The rabbit lias been introduced by human agency into several 



Tn All c *t'T"3 Ifl ^13 



countries beyond Europe, where it has flourished and multiplied to 

 a degree beyond conception ;— so much so, indeed, that in Australia and New 

 Zealand these animals have become a perfect pest and a serious hindrance to 

 agriculture. Rabbits were first introduced at the period of the highest prosperity 

 of Australia and New South Wales by a patriotic gentleman who thought it would be 

 a good thing to import a few rabbits into the colony, as they would serve for food 

 and for sport. He accordingly imported three couple of rabbits, and they were 

 turned loose. It was not long before it was found that the district in question had 

 been transformed into a gigantic rabbit warren. Indeed it was discovered that a 

 single pair of rabbits, under favourable circumstances, would in three years have a 

 progeny numbering 13,718,000. The inhabitants of the colony soon found that 

 the rabbits were a plague, for they devoured the grass, which was needed for 

 the sheep, the bark of trees, and every kind of fruit and vegetables, until the 

 prospect of the colony became a very serious matter, and ruin seemed inevitable. 

 In New South Wales upwards of fifteen million rabbit skins have been exported 

 in a single year; while in the thirteen years ending with 1889 no less than thirty- 

 nine millions were accounted for in Victoria alone. To prevent the increase of 

 these rodents, the introduction of weasels, stoats, mungooses, etc., has been tried : 

 but it has been found that these carnivores neglected the rabbits and took to 

 feeding on poultry, and thus became as great a nuisance as the animals they w r ere 

 intended to destroy. The attempt to kill them off by the introduction of an 

 epidemic disease has also failed. In order to protect such portions of the countiy 

 as are still free from rabbits fences of wire-netting have been erected ; one of these 

 fences erected by the Government of Victoria extending for a distance of upwards 

 of one hundred and fifty geographical miles. In New Zealand, where the rabbit 

 has been introduced little more than twenty years, its increase has been so 



