OTHER USEFUL ANIMALS 



The origin of these cattle is not known, 

 but it is probable that they have a slight 

 admixture of zebu blood. According to 

 Pearson, a few animals, commonly re- 

 ferred to as buffalo, were imported from 

 Africa about 100 years ago. These ani- 

 mals carried humps and were probably 

 zebus. The blood still persists in the 

 native cattle of the island. This may 

 help to explain why the native cattle 

 seem to be immune to Texas fever. Herds 

 of cattle containing zebu blood have 

 been kept in Texas for years and in 1906 

 some pure zebus were brought to the 

 state. 



RABBITS 



At first thought, it may appear doubt- 

 ful to some whether rabbits should be 

 regarded as useful animals. Consider- 



Fig. 442 — CATTLE WITH ONE-EIGHTH OR 



MORE OF ZEBU BLOOD 



(Courtesy of T. V. Hayes) 



able interest attaches to rabbits and hares, 

 however, on account of the great damage 

 which they may do to various cultivated 

 crops and on account of the use of their 

 meat under certain circumstances. A 

 few years ago considerable interest was 

 stirred up in the Belgian hare as a pos- 

 sible source of profit. This rapidly died 

 out and at present little is heard of the 

 Belgian hare. Babbits and hares are 

 universally hunted as game and their 

 meat is considered by many as a delicacy. 

 In some localities these animals have 

 bred to an enormous extent and have 

 become serious agricultural pests. They 

 have then been killed and their meat 

 used for canning and other purposes. 

 Thus, Australia annually exports 7,000, 

 000 rabbits as frozen meat. 



As is well known the rabbit pest has 

 long been so serious in Australia that 

 various rewards, at times as high as 

 $50,000, have been offered for a really 

 effective remedy in exterminating them. 



As a result of these offers several 

 hundred different remedies have been 

 proposed to receive the reward, but 

 none of them has been found to answer 

 fully the requirements of the case. The 

 best success has been obtained by trap- 

 ping in various ways and by the use of 

 poisons such as phosphorus, strychnine, 

 etc. Similarly in California, Colorado 

 and other western states where rabbits, 

 particularly the various species of jack 

 rabbits, have multiplied greatly, it has 

 been found necessary to adopt repressive 

 measures. The methods employed for 

 this purpose include hunting with fire- 

 arms or ferrets, trapping, asphyxiation 

 with gases in their burrows, and driving 

 into corrals by means of regularly or- 

 ganized parties of hunters. The last 

 named method has proved most effective 

 in California, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Col- 

 orado and elsewhere. By this means 

 hundreds of thousands of jack rabbits 

 have been captured and used for food. 

 As many as 20,000 have been captured 

 in a single drive. In this account we 

 cannot go into the extermination of 

 rabbits, except in so far as such methods 

 lead to the production of marketable 

 material, as for example meat and skins. 

 The Belgian hare h as been claimed 

 by some authorities to be a cross between 

 the hare and the rabbit, but Harting 

 maintains that the Belgian hare or lep- 

 orine is simply a large domesticated va- 

 riety of the common European rabbit. It 

 resembles the brown hare in form and 

 color. The race of animals originated 

 about 50 years ago in Belgium, as a 

 variety of the rabbit, and has since been 

 reared extensively for the purpose of in- 

 creasing its size and of producing the 

 form, color and fur of the wild hare. 

 The fur of the back next to the skin is 

 dark colored instead of being light, as is 

 the case with the common brown hare. 

 The fore legs are much shorter than in 

 the wild species. The standard of 

 points for the Belgian hare as adopted 

 at present requires that the color should 

 be a rich reddish brown, with as little 

 white as possible under the jaws. The 

 body is long with well tucked up flanks. 

 The tail should be straight, the ears 

 about 5 inches long and thin, the eye 

 large and of a hazel color, the fore feet 

 and legs long and slender, and free from 

 white hairs. The weight should be about 

 8 pounds and the short, arched appear- 

 ance of the back common in the rabbit is 

 considered a defect in the Belgian hare. 



