ENEMIES TO WOODLANDS AND NURSERIES- 59 



Xovember to April with a casing of straw or of thorny 

 brushwood, or should be coated over to a height of a couple 

 of feet with a mixture of cowdung, lime, and asafoetida. 



Rabbits {^Lepus cunictiltLs), 



Rabbits occur in greatest numbers where the soil is of a 

 sandy nature. In addition to damaging plants, as hares do 

 by nibbling them and by gnawing off the bark so as to 

 interfere with their normal development and often with their 

 very existence, rabbits also do an excessive amount of 

 damage by undermining the soil. 



The kind of tree most likely to be injured by the nibbling 

 of the shoots is the Scots pine, the chief species of trees 

 planted out on sandy soils, although black pines, larch, and 

 spruce all suffer to a considerable extent when they come 

 within the reach of rabbits. 



Wherever in extensive woodlands they have full oppor- 

 tunity of making any choice in the matter, they exhibit a 

 preference for gnawing the bark of hornbeam, ash, acacia, 

 aspen, willow, hazel, dog-wood, and fruit trees. But on vast 

 sandy, moorland stretches, where woods occur only here and 

 there over small areas, they are exceedingly apt to overrun 

 young plantations, and to commit great havoc by nibbling 

 and gnawing the young shoots of all the different kinds of 

 plants, by tunnelling and undermining the light soil, and by- 

 damaging the roots. 



It is a peculiarity worth noticing that, in woodland districts 

 where rabbits are at all plentiful, hares are less numerous 

 than usual ; for the restlessness of the former would appear 

 to be highly inimical to the comfort of the latter. 



Even despite the steady use of the gun, and the aid of 

 ferrets and traps, rabbits are apt to breed in excessive numbers, 

 wherever they take possession of sandy soil and form their 

 warrens. Among their other natural enemies may be men- 

 tioned the weasel, the stoat, and the fox, whose numerical 

 increase in any considerable degree, however, would hardly 



