DESTRUCTION OF RABBITS IN NEW ZEALAND. $29 
this planet of use to it, as its climatic conditions proved favourable 
to their reception, and each thing carried with it its own check 
from excessive increase. The general check (this course of 
reasoning supposes space to be filled with germs, and other 
planets inhabited) is a worm of some kind. For when any 
living thing becomes too thick—be it man, sheep, rabbit, pig, 
horse, ox, or other animal—immediately the land becomes 
infected by the excessive excreta of itself or its natural check. 
I rather fancy that its own excreta first starts the check, which 
rapidly spreads by means of the host. In the sheep we see it 
when we say that the land becomes sheep-sick. Upon such 
lands the hoggets get the lung-worm, and die off. So that, 
supposing we tried our best to keep but one animal running 
constantly upon one set of lands, the end would be that that 
animal would dwindle down to very few indeed. In the case of 
the rabbit, its own intestinal worms, or the intestinal worms of 
the natural enemy, are always ready to infect the lands and 
guard those lands against entire occupation. And so determined 
is nature to do this, that away up in the arctic regions, where 
the rabbit, jack-rabbit, and hare can go in comfort, being furred 
animals, there is it followed by the stoat changed into an ermine. 
The stoat puts on a warmer coat, and follows the rabbit even to 
the poles. For that reason stoats are alone to be relied upon by 
our Government here for suppressing the plague in the high 
snowy lands of the South Island. 
Now let us look at the atlas, and see the position of Australia 
and New Zealand. What is it? Disconnection from the four 
great continents. Here there were neither rabbits nor any 
natural enemy (I allude to the end of the secondary period in 
geology, when Australia is supposed to have been separated from 
' the mainland). The land was clean from either. Lately we 
have brought the rabbit, and, finding no check either against 
itself or against it asa pest, it rapidly developed into the pest 
form. Neither ferret, stoat, weasel, fox, nor wolf was here to 
infect the lands with the tape-worm eggs, and so the rabbit 
throve and multiplied. The dog alone was here, and in the 
Wairarapa the dog appears to have carried out nature’s law of 
check. My accidentally giving the dogs areca-nut but assisted 
nature’s law. 
Of course, I do not say that the tape-worm I use is the worst 
