328 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
clearing up the present question. My argument is as follows— 
and Professor Thomas, before sending in his full report, will do 
well to think over what I am about to say, and to amend his 
summary of conclusions at the end of his interim report lately 
presented to Parliament :— 
The rabbit appears to have started in Africa. Negro legends 
all point to it as the cunning animal, just as our legends point 
to the fox. From Africa it passed to Asia and Hurope, as 
European lands emerged from the sea. (I consider Africa the 
oldest continent, geologically, and the negroes the oldest race of 
men, ethnologically.) From Asia it passed into America, or the 
jack-rabbit there may have been in America coterminous with 
the rabbit’s existence in Africa or Asia. With the rabbit went 
the stoat, weasel, ferret, cat, dog, fox, wolf, and other natural 
enemies. I am speaking now of many thousand years ago— 
long before men ever appeared upon the face of the earth, but 
still while the four present great continents were continents, and 
Australia and New Zealand isolated. 
And these animals, which we call the natural enemies, were 
specially sent by nature to watch the rabbit and prey upon it, 
and prevent its excessive increase. Thus the common vital 
force always acts. One order of creation is not allowed to take 
possession of the earth—another checks it; and so the balance 
of utility is preserved. 
Sir James Hector, thinking as I think, stated some months 
since that soon there would be no rabbits in New Zealand. I 
would point out to Sir James that in saying that he has gone too 
far. Nature checks excessive increase, it is true, but nature 
does not willingly allow any one order of creation to be exter- 
minated. On many an estate at home there will still be found, 
after a thousand years of experience, the fox, the stoat, the 
weasel, the dog, the cat, and the rabbit side by side. Trap off 
the ground-vermin, as it is called, and the rabbit will rapidly 
increase; so that any idea of our depending entirely upon 
bladder-worm or any disease must be abandoned. The rabbit 
will never be exterminated now from the lands of Australasia. 
Nor is it advisable for us to exterminate it. 
But there is a great distinction between the rabbit as an 
animal and the rabbit asa pest. Nature carefully makes this 
distinguishment in all living things. Only those things came to 
