28 5 The Wild Rabbit. 



the most unsuitable and inhospitable parts. Notwith- 

 standing, they have their peculiarities like other animals, 

 and particularly as regards sites for their burrows and the 

 expanses they frequent. In some parts it is almost impos- 

 sible to get together a dozen head per annum, while in 

 others all efforts to exterminate them are futile. 



Rabbits on the farm, it must be admitted, do consider- 

 able damage if allowed to become numerous; but on a 

 well-conducted game-preserve this is unnecessary and un- 

 desirable. If one wants to make money or to pay some 

 expenses by them, it is easy enough to form a small 

 warren, or to fence in a few scores of acres of wood, 

 copse, &c., without having them widely dispersed, inflict- 

 ing damage in all directions, not only on the tenants' 

 crops, but the owner's hedgerows, banks, and fields. But 

 then they are useful to feed the foxes, and if foxes get 

 rabbits they will not trouble the birds to half the 

 extent they would if there were few or no rabbits. It 

 must be borne in mind, too, that the rabbit does not live 

 on young corn alone; that one cannot very well catch 

 young rabbits, which do most mischief, in snares, nor yet 

 old ones in traps not set in rabbit runs ; nor would it pay the 

 farmer to be continually on the watch, or to have some 

 " duly authorised person " on the look-out for him, to kill 

 his share of the rabbits, to which he has a concurrent right. 

 The preserver, notwithstanding the Ground Game Act, has 

 the ground game in his own hands, and if he is wise he 

 will, in his own interest, keep the rabbits within proper and 

 desirable limits. A farm without a few rabbits would be 

 a melancholy sight indeed, and the farmer would be the 

 first to protest. 



The duties of the game-preserver, as far as regards 

 rabbits, demand no specification. The same operations 

 which are required to produce a head of winged game will 



