NOTES ON THE BABBIT. 405 



Zealand (Zool. 1882, p. 21), ostensibly for the purpose of keeping 

 down the Rabbits, but as they destroy many other native animals 

 the wisdom of introducing them is very doubtful. 



In the Mallee Country, in Victoria, which was a regular 

 forcing-ground for Rabbits, some settlers had tried to grow a few 

 vegetables round their house, and in order to prevent the incur- 

 sions of the Rabbits, had roped round their patch of kail-ground, 

 and fastened dogs at short intervals along the rope, so that they 

 could slip along the rope as they required in order to catch the 

 Rabbits. Rut the numbers were so great that the dogs soon 

 ceased to look at them. A writer in ' Chambers' Journal,' on 

 "Rabbit-land," has very truthfully shown that even rewards 

 offered for the scalp of Rabbits were not always effective in 

 inducing settlers to endeavour to secure the reward. The settlers, 

 in one experiment, were to fix the amount of the bonus to be paid 

 on each scalp, and the State was to pay back 4jd. of every 6d. 

 which the settler thus expended. The rent paid per acre being 

 almost nil, it paid the lessee better to maintain a good stock of 

 Rabbits with the view of obtaining a revenue from scalp -money 

 than to rear sheep and cattle. In another case a squatter paid 

 rabbitters 2d. for each tail that they brought back to the house. 

 In a short time a quantity of tailless rodents were seen running 

 about the station paddocks. These were not, as might have been 

 fancied, a new development of the genus Rabbit, corresponding 

 to the Manx Cat, but simply the old Rabbits whose tails had 

 brought in twopence each, and who were now turned out to 

 propagate their race, so that the honest rabbitters should not be 

 reduced to penury. Wire -netting is used on a very large scale ; 

 some of these fences are hundreds of miles long ; but there is 

 always a chance of Rabbits burrowing under such fences, or 

 again of their being fenced in ; so that such fences are at the 

 best but an imperfect remedy. Poisoning wheat has been tried, 

 but the Rabbits grew too cunning for the poisoners : M. Pasteur 

 proposed, as is well known, to inoculate the Rabbits with the 

 microbes of chicken cholera (cholera des poules).* But no 

 Government in Australia has seen fit to adopt his proposal, 

 though I believe that experiments are still being carried out in a 

 small island in Sydney Harbour. After all, a continent overrun 

 with mad Rabbits would not be a very cheerful place of abode. 



* See ' The Zoologist,' 1888, p. 321.— Ed. 



