384 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



disease, and the probability of its being successfully introduced 

 into Australia. 



One word, however, first as to the extent of the great rabbit- 

 plague in Australasia. 



About 1867, it is said, a Mr. Kobinson turned out thirteen 

 wild rabbits on his run; by June, 1870, he had spent £7000 

 trying to get rid of them. In one day, a party of gentlemen shot 

 no less than 2400. 



Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, a competent authority, and an old 

 colonial, writes in 'Blackwood's Magazine' for December, 1887: — 



" The destruction of rabbits should be looked upon as a paramount 

 duty .... of most urgent necessity. It has, in plain words, come to 

 this : — that rabbits must be utterly subdued in New South Wales, or the 

 colonists must once more withdraw themselves into the county of Cumber- 

 land, and there quietly await the wearing out of the pest. That time will 

 arrive. When all vegetation has been utterly destroyed, the rabbits must 



lay themselves down and die On the arid, barren Riverina plains 



(whereon naturally not even a mouse could exist) there are pastured at 

 present some twenty or twenty-five millions of high class merino sheep 

 (a thing which has been made possible by means of the artificial storage of 

 water). These sheep are being gradually eaten out by rabbits. In spite of 

 all endeavours to the contrary, these said rabbits are gradually increasing in 



numbers On the south bank of the River Murray, consequently in 



the colony of Victoria, there is a * station ' named Kulkyne, which has about 

 twenty miles frontage to that river. The holding extends far back into 

 arid, naturally worthless, waterless country. On that station, by skilful 

 management and by command of capital, there came to be pastured about 

 110,000 sheep. When I, two or three years ago, visited that station, 

 I found that the stock depasturing it had shrunk to 1200 sheep, dying in 

 a paddock at the homestead. The rabbits had to account for the deficiency. 

 .... On that station they had eaten up and destroyed all the grass and 

 herbage ; they had barked all the edible shrubs and bushes ; and had latterly 

 themselves begun to perish in thousands." 



It was recently announced in the Legislative Council of New 

 South Wales, by the Hon. J. Salamon, that up to the year 1883 

 only, 7,853,787 rabbits had been destroyed in the colony, at a 

 cost to Government of £361,492. Adding to this sum a fair 

 proportion of the bonuses paid in addition by stock-breeders, 

 farmers, and others, each rabbit killed is estimated to have cost 

 on an average about Is. 3d. In other words, it cost as much, or 

 more, to kill a wild rabbit in Australia as it does to buy one in 



