ANIMALS INTRODUCED FOR SAKE OF UTILITY 253 



Government "Rabbits Order" was found necessary, giving 

 Local Agricultural Committees power to authorize any person 

 to kill rabbits wherever they have become a nuisance. 



EFFECTS OF INTRODUCTION OF RABBIT 



It must not be supposed that a far-reaching introduction, 

 such as that of the Rabbit, stands by itself. Like a stone 

 cast in a placid pool, it gives rise to ripples of influence of 

 first, second, third one cannot tell how distant degree, 

 spreading one cannot tell to what depth and extent. Thus 

 numbers of Rabbits alter to a remarkable degree the vegeta- 

 tion of the districts they infest, changing the nature as well 

 as the amount of plant life, as Mr E. P. Farrow clearly 

 shows in a well illustrated paper in the Journal of Ecology 

 for March 1917. This change in vegetation in turn affects 

 the animals, mammals and birds, insects arid other inverte- 

 brates. Some disappear and their places are filled by -new- 

 comers, while others of the old residenters flourish and 

 multiply under the new conditions. 



In yet another way, Rabbits influence their co-habitants in 

 a region. There is, for example, a definite connection between 

 over-abundance of Rabbits and scarcity of Hares, or between 

 the appearance of Rabbits and the disappearan.ee of Hares. 

 It is quite likely that the general decrease of the Common 

 Hare in Scotland, a decrease which has been noticed for many 

 years, may be due in part to the increase of the Rabbit in 

 recent times. Local Scottish instances of this relationship 

 are known ; but an Australian example offers more simple 

 and direct evidence. A writer in The Field for 26th May 

 1917 states that Hares, introduced into Australia, were at 

 one time so abundant in the district of Goulburn in New 

 South Wales that drives had to be arranged to keep their 

 numbers in check as many as 800 on occasion being killed- 

 in a single day. At that time Rabbits had not yet reached 

 Goulburn from the region of Geelong, where four couples 

 had been liberated by settlers about 1858. As the Rabbits 

 spread over the intervening 400 miles, the Hares began to 

 disappear, until after the extraordinary increase of the 

 Rabbit, few were left. Yet so soon as rabbit-fencing was 

 put up, and the enclosed areas, sometimes covering several 



