EXTERMINATION OF THE RABBIT IN AUSTRALASIA. 387 



one has ever yet asserted that it attacks any animals except 

 rabbits. True, little or nothing is definitely known as to its 

 nature, even among the highest scientific authorities ; but there 

 can be no question that scientific research would show it to be an 

 infectious epidemic, spreading by means of bacilli, and that these 

 bacilli would prove fully capable of being transported to our 

 Australasian colonies and there propagated. It is also true 

 that the Canadian and the Anglo -Australasian rabbits are not 

 specifically identical ; but it has been shown that even in America 

 the disease is not confined to one species, while there are reasons 

 for believing that some very similar disease has occasionally 

 appeared amongst our English rabbits, for Daniel, in his well- 

 known work, 'Rural Sports' (vol. i. p. 348), says: — 



" Warren farmers are sometimes liable to great disorders from an 

 epidemic disorder among the rabbits. The spring and summer of 1798 

 were so favourable to the breeding of the rabbits that the warrens in all 

 parts were supposed to have never been more plentifully stocked, but great 

 numbers of the young ones perished by a disorder, supposed to be produced 

 by the continued wet in the autumn. It was infectious, and the first 

 symptom was a swelling in the glands of the neck. The rot ensued and 

 death soon followed." 



It is, however, imperative that very precise and exhaustive 

 experiments as to the nature of rabbit-cholera should precede 

 any attempt to exterminate the Australasian rabbits by its aid. 

 It will, in the first place, be necessary to show that it is fatal to 

 Lepus cuniculus. In the second place, it is essential to ascertain 

 what other animals (both wild and domestic), if any, are affected 

 by it. In the event of it being shown to affect any domestic 

 animals, its value will be at once destroyed as a remedy for the 

 rabbit-pest ; but, in the absence of any definite information under 

 this head, we are tolerably safe in assuming that rabbit-cholera 

 will not attack domestic animals. All such questions, as regards 

 mouse-typhus, were investigated by Professor Lofner, in that 

 exhaustive manner which marks the work of the Teutonic man of 

 science, before any attempt was made to put practically to the 

 test the value of the disease as a remedy for the plague of voles. 



This done, it will only remain to put rabbit-cholera to a 

 practical test in a manner more or less similar to that adopted by 

 Prof. Loffler with his "mouse-typhus"; and it will, I think, be 

 admitted that, with our present knowledge of the nature of rabbit- 



