EXTERMINATING RABBITS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3723, 21 June 1883, Page 3

EXTERMINATING RABBITS.

[To tiie Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sin, —Noticing somo discussion in your columns re tho rabbit post, and in particular a letter signed " Coney," it may not be out of place for me, having had considerable experience in superintending tho clearing of country infested with rabbits, to offer the following suggestions. I think your correspondent's lettor has a misleading tendency, and his system is radically wrong. In a country infested with rabbits to hunt them with dogs is only to cause them to spreadover fresh country, and this '' Coney '' perhaps unwittingly admits. He says, " I know from experience that when a pioce of ground is constantly hunted over rabbits would not stop." Just so. And where do they go to ? In rough country it is scarcely possiblo to exterminate the pest, but the most cffectunl agent for that purposo, yet discovered, is phosphorised grain carefully prepared and systematically applied. Have reliable men to do tho work, and pay them by results, also have competent inspectors to see that the ground is systematically worked, and nono of it is missed. For support of my theory I would refer to Mr Stewart, Chief Inspector, Vincent Co., Otago ; he will inform you, as ho does the squatters there, that he does not recognise dogs, as a means of eradicating the pest at all; and there is another objoction to dogs, that they are always more or less injurious to stock. Thero is, howover, this drawback to poisoned grain, in this district, that tho grass does not die off in the winter, and rabbits do not readily cat poisoned grain when thoy can get grass. In my humble opinion the only effectual way of subduing the rabbits is not by means of dogs, cats, ferrets, or even phosphorous, but by population.—l am, ifcc, Anti-CaniSi June 21, 1883.