rape oe’ 
THE RABBIT-PEST IN NEW ZEALAND. 443 
constant employ. At the end of the year 1877, finding that the 
Rabbits were still increasing, and having reason to believe that 
the Ferrets were being destroyed, they dismissed all rabbiters ; 
but in March, April, and May, 1878, they employed again two 
men on a part where the Rabbits were especially thick, and the 
result being unsatisfactory they dismissed them. From that 
date they have not employed rabbiters. The only men employed 
in connection with Rabbits are two. These were necessary for 
the protection of the Ferrets. (This was prior to the Act 
making it penal to take or destroy Ferrets.) One is, with his 
son, a boundary keeper on the Conway, and it is his duty to kill 
Pigs and any Rabbits he may see. The other is in the position 
of a small settler, who occupies a homestead of Messrs. Bullens’ 
at the Kahautara, milks from twenty-four to forty cows, and 
employs two labourers. He breeds Ferrets for Messrs. Bullen 
on a capitation fee, and kills Pigs and Rabbits. His chief duty 
as to Rabbits is to keep a bit of river boundary, and shoot Rabbits 
as they come on from the adjoining property. These two men 
are at opposite sides of the run, thirty miles apart. They only 
have two or three dogs, each carefully trained to Ferrets. The 
rabbit-skins tallied over by the man at the Kahautara boundary 
were in June, 1888 (representing five months’ killing), 98 dozen ; 
in August, 1883, 48 dozen; in May, 1884, 109 dozen, giving a 
total of 8000 skins in sixteen months, nearly all the Rabbits 
coming over the boundary. 
Messrs. Bullen have never laid any poison at all on the run. 
It is manifest that the two men employed, if they were doing 
nothing but rabbiting, could have no perceptible effect in reducing 
Rabbits on 90,000 acres of such country as I have described, 
and that no poison at all having been used, if, as I think I shall 
show, the Rabbits have been completely overcome, it is the 
Ferrets alone that have done the work. Before stating what I 
saw, I will give the sheep figures. 
In 1878 Messrs. Bullen shore 51,578 sheep, but, being satisfied 
that the flock had suffered serious injury, and were deteriorating 
from Rabbits, they then reduced it by boiling down. In 1879 
they shore 42,600 sheep, and again reduced the flock by boiling 
down. In 1880 they shore only 34,300. From this date the im- 
pression made by the Ferrets became sensible, and they began to 
increase the flock, as shown by the following shearing tallies :— 
