332 



YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



year, and thus furnishes a rich, succulent, and attractive food for 

 tlie cottontail and jack rabbits. Where an alfalfa patch is isolated, 

 like a small oasis in a desert, rabbits sometimes keep it pastured 

 down, so that little if any forage can be cut. Besides eating the 

 plants, the animals keep well-worn paths beaten through the fields. 



On open western ranges, ordinarily, the rich native grasses, though 

 often of sparse growth, furnish ample food for rabbits; and when 

 the animals are numerous the amount of pasturage available for 

 stock is considerably reduced. In the Southwest rabbits often eat 

 the juic}^ pulp in the pads of the prickly pear (Opuntia) and the 

 bark and tAvigs of the mesquite (Prosopis) ^ and during long droughts 

 they subsist largely upon these plants. 



In the West and Southwest rabbits are destructive to watermelons 

 and cantaloupes, eating the young plants as well as the fruit. At 

 Laredo, Tex., H. C. Oberholser, of the Biological Survey, observed 

 that jack rabbits had ruined an entire field of cantaloupes when the 

 plants were about 6 inches high, and had greatly damaged a field of 

 watermelons. At Seguin, Tex., in November, 1904, Vernon Bailey 

 found that about 75 per cent of the w^atermelons in one field had been 

 destroyed by jack rabbits, and that cantaloupes could not be grown 

 except when protected by rabbit-proof fences. 



INJURY TO GARDENS. 



Rabbits are fond of nearly all garden vegetables, but are par- 

 ticularly partial to peas and cabbages, eating the plants at all stages 

 of growth, especially when small. They often invade market gardens 

 and truck patches near towns and do much damage. Formerly, 

 when there were few restrictions on the hunting of rabbits, boys and 

 dogs usually kept down the numbers of the animals so that they 

 interfered but little with market gardening. With the very short 

 open season for rabbit shooting now provided in some States and a 

 constantly growing tendency everywhere to " post " lands against 

 trespassers, damages by the animals have become more serious, and 

 truck farmers are more and more compelled to resort to close fencing 

 as a protection. 



INJURY 10 TREES. 



Rabbits injure trees and shrubs in two ways — b}^ cutting off 

 the ends of branches and twigs within reach, and by eating the 

 bark. Young nursery trees and forest seedlings, both evergreen and 

 deciduous, are destroyed in the first way; while orchard and larger 

 forest trees are badly damaged and often killed in the second way. 

 When the trunk of a tree is attacked, the injury begins at a height 

 of from 8 to 16 inches from the ground. The large incisors of the 

 animals cut into the bark laterall}^ from both sides, and a strip of 

 bark is torn away. This is repeated until large areas of wood are 



