TUB &ABBIT. 



her (ihitd by tbe ear that remained, dragged it into tlie bod* 

 ohamber with the rest. 



However averse one may be to such a course, it is only fair 

 to set against the modem theory that rabbits are cruelly used 

 if denied drink, the arguments of a host of breeders on the old> 

 fashioned system, who persist that water is injurious. Writing 

 to me on the subject, a rabbit-breeder says, " That the rabbit 

 toiU live and thrive without other liquid aliment than may be 

 derived from green leaves, is a question that might be answered 

 affirmatively by hundreds of rabbit-keepers, and if they were 

 endowed with speech, by rabbits themselves, in a million cases. 

 To my thinking there is no getting over the fact, that the 

 rabbit by nature possesses the capability of existing almost 

 entirely without drink. Domestication and culture may alter 

 the form of the animal, or even his tastes and appetites, but 

 that it could ever so completely revolutionize the laws of nature 

 as to make a drinking animal a non-drinking one, is more than 

 the maddest philosopher dare assert. Here is the case : the 

 rabbit eats, and does do without drink. I have scores of animals 

 of my own, and am acquainted with people who have each ten 

 times my number, and never is such a thing as a water-vessel 

 seen within my hutches or theirs. All the liquid they require 

 they obtain from the green meats with which they are regularly 

 provided. It is seldom I have sickness in my hutches. Of 

 course I have, as has every other rabbit-keeper, a few does in 

 my collection who are given occasionally to cannibalism ; but 

 surely it is too hard on the ' no water-trough' party to attribute 

 the continuation of the horrible propensity to their old-fashioned 

 system. AU the world — at least, all the rabbit-keeping world — 

 knows that anything that tends to fright or suspicion on the 

 part of a doe, will induce her to devour her young. Will she 

 not do so if a cat happens suddenly to look in on her and her 

 progeny, or if the noise of a gun-shot startles her, or even — as 

 once was my experience — should a mouse creep into the hutch ? 

 And may not all or either of these things occur, even if an 

 entire water-works were at the animal's command P There is 

 no denying that the practice of allowing rabbits to drink at 

 their will has seeming humanity to back it, and I must say 

 that if I found that my rabbits would thrive as weU with as 

 without water, they should have it ; but as I only want to see 

 the animals in my care healthy and thriving, and as to the 

 best of my belief they are both, I have no present hydrcipathio 

 intentions." 



