EFFECT OF SETTLEMENT UPON INDIGENOUS VEGETATION. 209 
So far, the most promising seems to be fencing off the water with 
wire netting and then when the rabbits in dry weather congregate 
round the enclosure, supplying them with water poisoned with 
arsenic. Poisoned sticks, grain, and jam have also been much 
used and are very effectual. It seems tome however that the 
rabbit plague is rapidly reaching that stage when it will prove its 
own remedy. Unfortunately it is scarcely practicable to wait for 
this, for before the effects of overcrowding became severe, all the 
live stock in the West would probably be dead of starvation. I 
am inclined to think that if Pasteur’s virus of chicken cholera 
would do the work, it would be worth trying. But unfortunately 
Dr. Katz’s experiments at Rodd Island seem to show that it is 
incapable of standing the high summer temperature experienced 
in the Western Interior, which at once destroys all hope in that 
direction. 
With regard to hares, their ravages, although very serious, as yet 
bear no comparison to those of their cousins the rabbits. Indeed 
from a personal knowledge of their habits, I should say that their 
mischief was chiefly done to farmers’ green crops and to trees, 
both fruit and ornamental, which have been introduced. They 
do not seem to have wandered into the inland dry country very 
much, or if they have, the damage done is lost sight of in the 
greater destruction wrought by rabbits. Pastoralists complain of 
the rabbits, farmers of the hares. 
The pasturing of sheep and cattle damages the indigenous 
flora in much the same way as the rabbits do. Given a few good 
seasons and owners let their flocks and herds increase to the verge 
of the carrying capabilities of their holdings. When drought 
comes, the starving animals devour every vestige of green herbage, 
pull the roots out of the ground and eat them, and even lick the 
seeds off the surface. J remember once expressing surprise to the 
owner of a river frontage near Mudgee at the good condition of 
his stock in a dry season. He told me that in the spring there | 
had been an unexampled growth of trefoil (/Mendicago denticulata ) 
on the river banks which had produced a very large quantity of 
N—Sept. 7, 1892. 
