TH^l AGBiCULTliBAL JOURNAL. 



431 



N(*tes on Belgian Hare Breeding. 



By Douglas 



THE following notes may supplement 

 usefully the very excellent article 

 upon the Belgian hare by Mr. H. S. Power 

 in No. 10 of the Agricultural Journal. 



IN-BREBDING. 



I made the acquaintance of the Belgian 

 hare under strikingly interesting circum- 

 stances. In 1879 I was told off by the 

 editor of the paper I was then connected 

 with to write up particulars of a series of 

 elaborate experiments then being carried 

 out by a highly cultivated young scientist, 

 whose premature death was admitted by 

 the late Professor Romanes to be a great 

 loss to a valuable branch of science. The 

 late Mr. John Edmondson, a Brighton 

 man, devoted his time and ample means 

 to settling, on a scientific basis, several 

 disputed or doubtful problems in animal 

 physiology. Most people accept in a 

 general way the theory that in-breeding 

 is prejudicial to animal development, but 

 few have proved it. This, among other 

 things, Mr. Edmondson laid himself out 

 to do, and at the time I came upon the 

 scene he was experimenting upon rabbits. 

 In order to ensure satisfactory conditions 

 for the test, he procured a pair of Belgian 

 hares which, in the ojjinion of experts, 

 represented all that was best in rabbit 

 life. He took the most elaborate pre- 

 cautions to satisfy himself that the pair 

 from which he intended to breed, were 

 absolutely free from taint, and how 

 thorough his preliminary enquiries were 

 may be gathered from the fact that 

 the pair cost him, with the expenses of 

 tests, over £25. Probably no more 

 perfect specimens of the breed were 

 ever mated. Mr. Edmondson constructed 

 at his residence, at West Brighton, an 

 enclosed warren, planted it with the best 

 grasses and succulent weeds that experi- 

 ence could suggest, engaged a man to do 

 nothing but attend to the wants of the 

 creatures, and sat down patiently to watch 

 results. Unfortunately I have long ago 

 lost sight of the pamphlet in which Mr. 

 Edmondson recorded the harvest of his 

 four years' experiment, but I recollect 

 enough to know that within fifteen 

 months this original pair had increased 



Blackburn. 



to over 800 ; that by the end of the 

 second year their progeny had run into 

 thousands, and that in four and a half 

 years Mr. Edmondson calculated that if 

 he had not been compelled to kill off the 

 young through want of room their market 

 value as food, at an average of 4d. per lb., 

 wotild have totalled over £400. In fact 

 the tables he gave of the rate of progree- 

 sional increase reminded one of the old 

 problem in mathematical progression — ■ 

 the horseshoe at a farthing per nail, 

 doubled with each nail. The object, 

 however, of the expei-iment was not to 

 prove the enormous reproductive power 

 of the rabbit, but the effects of in-breed- 

 ing, and certainly they were surprising. 

 The first eight litters averaged eight a- 

 piece, and healthy specimens tliey were, 

 some of the does attaining a weight of 

 9 lbs., and two bucks scaled lOg lbs. 

 But the average weight was 6^ lbs. 

 About the middle of the second year a 

 marked falling off in physique became 

 noticeable. The litters, fell to six, five, 

 foitr, and even three, and when over six, 

 they were puny, feeble specimens, and 

 one or more generally died. At the end 

 of the fourth year a hare weighing 5 lbs. 

 was a rarity, and a litter was never 

 known to exceed six. Mr. Edmondson 

 calciilated that had the experiment been 

 carried on on the same lines for five • 

 j'ears longer, the breed, if not ex- 

 tinct, would have been a diminutive rat- 

 like creature. When he gave expression 

 to this opinion he was met with the 

 question, why has not the Australian 

 l abbit died out ? as that came originally 

 from a single pair. With his character- 

 istic thoroughness, Mr. Edmondson made 

 elaborate enquiries in Australia, and 

 found that the single pair story M'as, 

 like manj' popular theories, baseless, for 

 he was able to trace over a hundred im- 

 portations of English rabbits to Australia 

 — wild and tame — during a period of ten 

 years, which completely disposes of the 

 original pair yarn. At the same time, 

 the effects of in breeding are observable 

 in the Antipodean rabbit, for they are 

 much smaller than the English species, 

 and I am told that in certain districts 



