DESTRUCTION OF RABBITS IN NEW ZEALAND. 827 
the disease (bladder-worm) was no good, and wondered at my 
taking any notice of the matter. Many of them, and the general 
number of rabbit-men and Maoris, considered that the bladders 
were caused by gunshot wounds. Even the other day, when I 
was bringing a good specimen of the disease down to Sir James 
Hector, the Maoris, clustering round the box, remarked, ‘‘ Ah! 
that rabbit was wounded.” All this evidence points to the one 
fact that for six years past this disease has been silently at work 
upon the runs of Wairarapa, and to it may be attributed, just as 
much as to the winter poisoning or the ferrets, the further great 
fact that in the Wairarapa the rabbit-pest has been conquered. 
(I attribute the subjection of the pest to the three things acting 
in combination.) The mange, itch, or scab had also been 
observed upon my own and the neighbouring runs; but the 
rabbiters considered that such rabbits had been scorched or 
badly burnt in the many fires lit to clear off the scrub. Liver- 
rot had also been observed, especially upon Mr. Tully’s run—a 
run celebrated for the bad state of the rabbit-pest there, but 
which I am happy to say is now almost clean. Prof. Thomas’s 
interim report does not say whether liver-rot is attributable to 
bladder-worm—or rabbit-fluke, as Sir James Hector named it: 
I fancy it is. 
Now, let us leave detail and go into principles. Let us see 
what this bladder-worm really means. Let us take an atlas of 
the earth, and inquire into the reasons why the four great conti- 
nents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America are free from the 
rabbit-pest, and why it is so bad in Australia and New Zealand. 
If my course of reasoning is found to be sound, then, surely, 
M. Pasteur’s proposed mode of suppressing the difficulty with 
cholera-microbe solution will be found to be as absolutely useless 
as our winter poisoning, and very far indeed removed from the 
right method of cure. I use the words ‘absolutely useless” in 
this sense: that it will be no good M. Pasteur sweeping off the 
rabbits by millions if they breed up again, and have to be again 
swept off. Under the winter poisoning we are sweeping off the 
rabbits in New Zealand at the present moment at about fifty 
millions a year. 
And, first, it will be remembered by members of this Institute 
that last year I read a paper upon “‘A Common Vital Force.” 
The reasoning in that paper has furnished me with matter for 
