THE TIMES ON THE RABBIT PEST.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1164, 20 June 1884, Page 3

THE TIMES ON THE RABBIT PEST.

The London Time s, in a leading article gives an account of the. plague of rabbits that has been exercising the Australian representatives assembled at Sydney, and discusses the remedies proposed and a tempted in order to deal with it. It is pointed out that the uew pest spreads with inconceivable rapidity ; indeed, at the i ate of two or three hundred miles in three or four years, and that the rabbits consume so much of the herbage as to have reduced the wool in one run from eight hundred bales to three hundred. One remedy. proposed is to introduce the disease called tuberculosis, or consumption, which has been found elsewhere to destroy harts “Ibis seems to us, says the Times, “ both a very distant and problematical expectation. The human race has been affbeted with tuber eulosis m various parts of the system from time immemorial, yet it still multiplies Some people go so far as to atsert that consumptive people ore more prolific than others. As rabbits frisk about in the open air, and occupy their own holes, they are not likely to catch consumption by breathing air fresh, or rather stale, from another’s lungs. It can only be by heredity, which will not he quite so quick and spreading a process as Mr j M Greed, of Woollnhra. seems to imagine. But there ia a certain mystery about th- se diseases which must inspire a wish to know more about them before one uses them as safe instruments. We might Hud ourselves laying with edgetoo s Man is strangely wedded to the whole animal creation, sharing its dan ;ers and disasters. Mr (heed has his reasons for believing that the rabbit tubercu l-.his will not attach -beep, ->r only in a ve-y mitigated form. But a very little kills a sheep, and it seldom dies except iu company. Wum a hundred sheep rot and die, there ensues a controversy whether it is a diae tsn or a plague, TJie do -tors a- e positive one why o. 'the other, but the poor farmer comes to tke conclusion that they do not know much about it, and that it does not, imtch matter aider ad The sheep are dead. That is all he knows about it Wo must conf -as to a shudder at the thought of importing a ptvjue into a continent that has hithertoenj rved a-sin.ular immunity from piagues. Plagues indeed we have imported there to our shame; and t hey have all but d stroyed the. prior simple native. We have imported our vices a-al 'he penaltie-. But there does seem a more(li-libe ate and calculating sort of wickedness in infectin'/, debilitating, and, in "that way, consuming a whu-e race of orCatUres. It ia impossible 'o supprei o the misgiving that Nature will avenge herself. i'iaeesed rabbits will, of course, be ea-endika.toe rest. What secun'y is there that the disease will, not be conveyed into the human system, oasibly in some new form/hy one of the in.-my Prof.ean operations of Nature ? There ha- been s one talk of ferrets, and of an Indian equivalent, called mongoose. Both are destructive enough , destroying every, creature they se . and thpn only sucking their blood. But tho rabbit has,’ ; to all appearance much greater fecundity than .any member of the weasel family. This, seems tu make extermination by this means an affair of centuries, and in that case it is neediest to ask what the fe rets will do when they fi' d themselves in sole possession, hut without the fpo-l to 1 heir taste., It is su meste I that, after making a clean sweep of ihe poultry -yarl they may attack babies, ns they have- been known to do. The Australian authorities do not seem to have cast their eyes on the numerous congeners of the f< rref, hardier and bigger. Within human m s m -ry the wild cat abounded in some parts of England, There are wild cats still in Scotland, but they are small creatures, thon.h wicke I enough. In pure dispair we must fall hack on the vast consuming power of our own species. Rabbiis are very good an I wholesome fare, especially to persons of a fub habit and’ an apoplectic tendency. Many prefer them to hare As is well known to old Bngl sh householders, they can be cooked in many ways. As in Australia ihese creatures are annually diver ing from its. proper destination millions of pounds worth of grass, we may presume that it is by producing millions of pounds worth of food—that is, supposing a market com-l be found f r it. Whether the food nan be brought to this coun ry is for those to say who are attaining much sue -ess in the conveyance of beef and mutton. But we cannot help calling the attention of large fain li-s with small incomes. or no inco nes, to the rem-rkable fact of renresrntatives of a whole con inr-nt, being invited to destroy what would probably feed half the mouths of this country where it within reach As to the remedy immediately under cousi '-ration, we are aware that it may be defended as not wo se than poisoning, shooting, trapping, or any other rough and ready moans ured for the extirpation of vermin. We shall be told, perhaps, that it is n->t worse than vaccination. We cau only reply that it, has a very ugly 'ook ; that it deals with a mysterons and uiideti led agency ; and that we bad better understand a little more about our own ailments before we import any into the comparatively simple and healthy natures of the [ioor brutes about os. When plagues c me, ns they generally do, unaccountably, that itself is a consolation. We bow to that which we cannot help, and which we call an inscrutable visitation. But what if Anstialiashou d be visited by some human plague, and it should be traced to the poor creatines we had plagued ourselves? The bare possibility seems enough to deter from such au expedient.