"Haven't I read about their being killed by forcing noxious gases into their warrens?" one of the boys asked.
"Yes," was the reply, "that has been done, but the machines for making and using the gas are costly and cumbersome, and in rocky regions they do not work satisfactorily.
"Recently the Government of New South Wales has offered a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds to any one who will devise a successful system of destroying rabbits, provided it is not dangerous to live-stock and to human beings. The attention of the scientific world is directed to the subject, and perhaps the remedy may be found. Pasteur, the celebrated French scientist, has proposed to inoculate a few rabbits with chicken-cholera and allow them to run among their kindred, and thus introduce the disease. He says it is harmless to all animals, with the exception of rabbits and chickens, and believes that the whole rabbit population could in this way be killed off, though at the same time our domestic fowls would be killed too, unless they were carefully shut up. We could afford to lose every fowl in the southern hemisphere if we could only get rid of this great pest of rabbits; but it will be necessary to proceed very cautiously, lest our sheep and cattle should suffer."
The youths had a realizing sense of the extent of this pest in the Australasian colonies, when they saw on several occasions whole hillsides and stretches of plain that seemed to be in motion, so thickly was the ground covered with rabbits. Mr. Abbott further told them that Dunedin and other cities had a regular exchange, or market, for rabbit-skins, where dealings were conducted as in the grain, wool, and other exchanges. The skins mostly find their way to London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Naples, where they are made into "kid" gloves of the lower grades. They are also made into hats, and it is hoped that they may be found useful for other purposes, so as to make profitable the wholesale slaughter of the animals on whose backs they grow.[1]
- ↑ A recent writer on this subject says: "On the arid, barren Riverina plains (whereon naturally not even a mouse could exist) there are pastured at present some twenty or twenty-five millions of high-class merino sheep. These sheep are being gradually eaten out by rabbits. The following will serve as an illustration, and it must be borne in mind that it is only one of many which could be adduced.
"On the south bank of the river Murray, consequently in the colony of Victoria, there is a station named Kulkyne, which has about twenty miles frontage to that river. The holding extends far back into arid, naturally worthless, waterless country. On that station, by skilful management and by command of capital, there came to be pastured on it about 110,000 sheep. When I two or three years ago visited that station I found
