The Daily Telegraph SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3100, 4 June 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1881.

We hear that the Hawke's Bay Rabbit Commissioners intend to strike another rate, and a heavier one than that of last year. It is to be hoped that good use will be made of the money. 'I he balance of last year's rate has been carefully put away for safe keeping, and unless it can be satisfactorily shown that this was done with an ulterior object we imagine land owners will decidedly oppose any further imposition. It may be—and we trust our supposition will prove correct —that the Commissioners found that the rate levied last year produced too small a sum for any beneficial purpose, and so resolved to hold its expenditure over until the amount could be supplemented. If this be the intention of the Commissioners we fail to see why they should have concealed the course to be adopted. There was nothing to be gained by this secrecy, except the openly expressed conviction of mojt of the settlers that the Commissioners did not know what should be done to avert the rabbit plague, and so were incompetent to perform their duties. It is now tolerably certain that, although the chief danger of a rabbit invasion lies at the south end of the provincial district, there are numerous colonies of the vermin within the province from which the whole country may be populated without external aid from the hungry hosts approaching along the coast and through the Seventy-mile Bush. At present, however, nothing whatever, has been done, and the powers vested in the Coramisfioners have been allowed to remain unused. The Standard, a paper published in the Wairarapa, a district in whica very many settlers have been competely ruined by rabbits, says: — "The Rabbit Nuisance Act, 1880, is certainly stringent euough in its provisions in compelling the settlers and landowners in the district to completely extirpate the rabbits which infest their holdings. But that Act only half meets the difficulty. Settlers may spend hundreds of pounds of good sterling money in the attempt to extirpate the rabbits on their land, and yet find all their efforts futile, if adjoining their holdings are Crown and native lands which form a vast rabbit warren, continually supplying a practically unlimited stock of vermin to lay waste the freeholds of industrious settlers." The following case is then cited:—"A settler who holds 200 acres of land has for years past been trying to stamp out the rabbit pest on his property, and alleges that be has expended a sum of £400 in his efforts to accomplish that effect. But his labor and his money have been alike thrown away. He has killed an enormous number of rabbits, but, as fast as the work of destruction goes on, fresh hordes of the vermin come upon his land from the native lands which bound his property on one side and the Crown lands which bound it on the other. In these Grown and native lands the rabbits are allowed to breed without interruption, and from the huge warrens thus created they of course spread over the district and inflict enorjious injury upon the grass and crops of the settlers. " It is not easy to get at the owners of native lands, and it would not be a lair charge upon a district to clear Crown lands of rabbits. The existing Act provides that the trustees for any proclaimed rabbit dis trict " shall have power to enter upon any lands." Now as the trustees or the County Council are empowered to destroy rabbits upon the lands ot settlers who have failed to do so themselves, why should not the same power be exercised with respect to rabbits upon Crown lands and native lands? It is as well to keep constantly in mind that the ravages committed by rabbits are very serious indeed ; they will not only eat up almost every gieen thing from off the face of the land which they over-run, but they do far worse—by digging up the roots of the grass. When these little " bunnies" in large numbers have worked their wicked will upon the land of a settler, they leave his erstwhile pleasant green paddocks as bare as a turn-pike road. It is true that the settlers could put up rabbit proof fencing, and thereby exclude the " bunnies" from their holdings. It so happens, however, that the cost of rabbit proof fencing is so very great, as to involve an outlay which many settlers could not bear to incur. Our Wairarapa contemporary concludes its artcle on this subject by saying that if the Governor possesses the necessary power he should issue regulations for the stamping out of the rabbit pest on Crown and Native Lands. If he does not possess the power, then there must be fresh legislation adopted on this important question during the ensuing session of Parlament.