EXTERMINATION OF THE RABBIT IN AUSTRALASIA. 383 



and thickets, bearing no mark of a violent death, and have noted the scarcity 



of this animal during the years immediately following I find also 



recorded in my notes a remarkable decrease, some years since, of the large 

 Long-eared Hares, L. calliotis var. texianus and L. campestris, in the Great 

 Salt Lake Valley, This decrease was also accompanied by the finding of 

 great numbers of the auimals dead on the sage-brush plains about the 

 Lake, showing no signs of a violent death, .... leading to the conclusion 

 that their death was due to an epidemic. So abundant had these species 

 been for several years prior to 1869 and 1870 that some of the Mormon 

 residents were accustomed to shoot them merely to feed their swine ; while 

 so scarce had they become in 1871, that it was with difficulty I could 

 obtain any specimens." 



I will conclude the evidence as to the prevalence of the 

 epidemic by stating my own experience. 



During the summer of 1883, I spent several weeks in the 

 town of Carberry, about 105 miles west of Winnipeg, without 

 seeing more than one solitary rabbit. In the summer of 1884, 

 I was again in Canada, and spent several weeks at Carberry. At 

 this time rabbits had become slightly more numerous, though 

 still far from common. Yet this was the same Carberry of which 

 Mr. E. Thompson writes, " In the fall of 1886 the woods about 

 Carberry so abounded with rabbits that killing them ceased to be 

 a sport." I was not at Carberry during 1886, but in the middle 

 of April in the following year I had occasion to pass westward 

 along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. I had no oppor- 

 tunity of alighting from the " cars," but was able, nevertheless, to 

 gather most conclusive evidence that the extraordinary abundance 

 of rabbits in the previous year had then been put an end to by 

 the breaking out of the disease. On the sides of the line as it 

 runs through the wooded country between Portage-la-Prairie and 

 Carberry, a distance of about fifty miles, the dead bodies of the 

 rabbits lay literally in hundreds, if not thousands. In some spots 

 several bodies were to be seen lying near one another ; and over 

 considerable distances a dried, Huffy, white rabbit's body might 

 be seen every few yards as the train rushed along, lying on the 

 edge of, or close to, the line. 



Much more evidence could be adduced in support of the 

 periodic extermination of these unfortunate rabbits by means of 

 some naturally-produced, though virulent, epidemic disease, but 

 enough has been advanced to establish the fact beyond a doubt. 

 It now remains, therefore, to enquire the exact nature of the 



