178 ANIMAL COMPETITORS 
were so undesirable. Lately, they have been 
turned to account as food, enormous numbers 
of their frozen carcases being shipped to Eu- 
rope; and also great quantities of canned rab- 
bit-flesh. 
- I am not aware that in this country any 
really wild colony has been permitted to grow 
except one near Belleville, Ontario, on a rocky 
point covered with cedars, which jutted into 
the Bay of Quinte. The increase in only two 
years was astonishing. Undoubtedly an en- 
closed space of waste land, where the creatures 
might burrow easily, if devoted to a colony 
would shortly produce a large annual crop 
for market, with a minimum of expense and 
trouble; but whether regular sale for them 
could be found is another question which would 
depend for its answer largely on local circum- 
stances. 
A few years ago an effort was made by the 
Department of Agriculture to arouse an in- 
terest in breeding and eating the large variety, 
known as Belgian or Dutch hare, which orig- 
inated in the Netherlands fifty or sixty years 
ago, but it did not succeed. These large rab- 
