THE RABBIT-PLAGUE IN AUSTRALIA. 95 



" Now for the Rheims experiments, to which so much import- 

 ance has been attached. A walled-in vineyard of nineteen acres 

 (eight hectares) was greatly infested with Rabbits, and when they 

 had multiplied so much that there was not sufficient herbage left 

 to keep them from starvation, the amiable old lady to whom the 

 place belonged had them fed each day with hay and dry clover. 

 After some time, however, even she found that it was too much, 

 and called in M. Pasteur, who saturated the food with his cholera- 

 poisoned broth, and in two or three days there were hardly any of 

 them left. That is, that famished Rabbits within an enclosure 

 and accustomed to artificial food, one day find that food poisoned, 

 and die accordingly, a result that might safely have been predicted 

 even by non-scientific people ; and that is all. One reason why 

 this experiment was not dangerous and, indeed, probably why it 

 was allowed to be performed at all : it was not done in summer, 

 and still less in the fierce heat and far-sweeping dust storms of 

 our plains ; it was done in the depth of a French winter, and amid 

 falling snow. 



"Again, he inoculates one or more Sheep, and allows others to 

 be in the fields with the poisoned Rabbits, and says they cannot 

 take it because they did not become infected then ; but this, too, 

 was done in the depth of winter ; and all know how much the 

 action of zymotic poisons is affected by season and temperature. 



"Information has been withheld as to what Birds it attacks, 

 and whether we may expect to lose our domestic poultr}' of every 

 kind. It is, however, pretty certain that we shall lose our native 

 insectivorous Birds, and with them the only restraint we possess 

 over Locusts and Grasshoppers, which, no longer checked as they 

 are now, might become a plague far worse than the Rabbits. But 

 it will naturally be said, If such things happen here, how is it that 

 they do not occur in France ? The answer to this question is two- 

 fold. In the first place, whenever a new disease falls upon virgin 

 soil adapted to its growth it extends with singular rapidity and 

 virulence, and that whether the disease be in man, as smallpox, 

 or in the earth, as thistles and brambles. After a time, however, 

 and often after the most frightful ravages, the disease appears to 

 have consumed either the whole or a very large portion of the 

 special material required for its growth, and then either disappears 

 altogether, or is confined within moderate bounds. A most striking 

 example of this is within the memory of all. In 1874 King 



