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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3766, 10 August 1883, Page 2

The Australasian, touching on some phases of the rabbit question, says that in Australia man is about to contend with rabbits for existence. In the thinly populated districts of New South Wales rabbits aro rapidly gaining ground, in spite of trapping and poisoning, and the result is almost within view unless some method can be adopted of destroying tho animals by wholesale. Attention is being turned to the plan proposed by Mr Willows, of Sydney, of inoculating some of the rabbits with tho germs of tuberculosis, and turning them out in the expectation that the disease may be communicated, and that thus tho pest may in time be so far reduced as to be brought within manageable limits. It is impossible to decide without trial whether the plan would be effectual or not, but analogy is not favorable to Mr Willows' assumption. Tuberculosis, although .claiming its victims in the human race, has hitherto failed to prevent a very liberal rate of increase. On Mr Brown's estate in Tasmania, tuberculosis is always present in the rabbits in a certain paddock, and although the animals are poor and emaciated, the cfisease does not appear to have been communicated to those in adjoining healthy paddocks. The probability, therefore, of the rabbits on and dry ground, in the genial climate of New South Wales and Queensland, taking the disease from in•eulated ones turned out amongst them would appear to be very remote. Human beings far gone in decline aro «ont to such climates in the hope of a recovery, and recovery would logically be the result in the case of the inoculated rabbits. A trial of the plan can alone decide the question, and secino- how great Js the interest at stake, land-owners are entitled to regard, any method of accomplishing the destruction of the rabbits as legitimate.