76 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



Hares and Rabbits. — Of the rodents the hares and 

 rabbits are, however, best known as food, and con- 

 tribute very largely to the European meat supply. 



In France about 70,000,000 of hares and rabbits are 

 consumed annually, and in this country some estimates 

 set the numbers down at 30,000,000. Those sold by 

 the dealers form but a small proportion of what are 

 eaten. A few years ago the average price of a hare was 

 half-a-crown or three shillings; but it has now risen 

 considerably, not owing to a decreased supply, but, as is 

 the case in many other instances, to the increase of the 

 number of persons who can afford to indulge in luxuries. 

 It is a forbidden food to Jews and Mahomedans, and our 

 British ancestors also refused to eat hares, from some 

 religious objection to them. 



The rabbit is very popular with the working classes, 

 and in almost any form is good and acceptable food. 

 The flesh in its general character more resembles that 

 of a fowl than does the hare. Both wild rabbits and 

 Ostend bred rabbits have advanced a third in price of 

 late years. 



Each case of Ostend rabbits contains, on an average, 

 six dozen. They are sent from Antwerp, Flushing, and 

 Calais, as well as Ostend, but are all sold as Ostend. 

 About 200 tons come in weekly. About 2,000,000 rabbits 

 were imported in the first five months of 1880 ; but this 

 was far below the average of the previous years, the wet 

 season of 1879 having killed large numbers of rabbits. 



So rapidly have rabbits increased in the Australian 

 colonies since their introduction, that the colonists find a 

 difficulty in keeping them down, and they are slaugh- 

 tered wholesale merely for their skins, their flesh being 

 a drug. Some establishments have, however, set to 

 work to preserve them in tins, and they are now shipped 

 to England, stewed, boiled with onions, curried and 

 fricasseed. 



As an instance of how the work of rabbit extermina- 

 tion is going on in some of the up-country districts, the 

 Tuapeka limes, of New Zealand, states that on one day 



