DISHONEST RABBITERS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 413, 28 November 1884, Page 5

DISHONEST RABBITERS.

Mow the money goes in the destruction of rabbits in New South Wales has been disclosed in the course of a trial in the Deniliquin Circuit Court. The Melbourne • Age ' writes : — " Some of the persons employed at this work have, it seems, got into the habit of making the scalp 3 they have secured do double, or even treble, duty when presenting their accounts for payment. Of the extent to which that was done in the case above referred to, some idea may be formed from tha fact that the number of scalps claimed for in the first week of their being employed was 600, and that in a few weeks it amounted to 1700. "Why this large increase in so short a time nobody could understand, but it was attributed by Mr Morrison, the inspector, to the diligence of Messrs Robert and Charles Jackson, father and son, contractors for the work, and so it would have continued but for an unfortunate circumstance. Neither Jackson the elder nor his son could drive such a roaring trade as this without assistance, and one of the persons they employed insulted Jackson the elder's wife, on which he got kicked out of doors, and went off to Arumpo, the head station, and told the overseer how this multiplication of scalps in such an incredibly short space of time had occurred. When the Jacksons first went to work they were fairly honest in counting the scalps to the inspector, but they soon found a way of making three scalps out of one skin by taking a strip oft the back and converting it into two scalps, sometimes by sewiug one ear on, taken from another scalp, sometimes not. Then, again, they dug pits or holes into which the scalps were thrown, after they had been counted over to the inspector, and where they were to be burned, but so contrived as that the processjof incineration should be stopped by sand and other rubbish falling in, and so menaced that they would be counted over again, with a few fresh ones added to them. Morrison, the inspector appears, from the way i& which he gave his evidence, at the trial, to be an astute man enough, but he could not examine 1700 scalps very closely in a day, nor could he be sure that the scalps were all burnt, although he 'sometimes' poked the fire about to see that they were so.' Whers the chief fault appears to have been in this case was in not requiring the Jacksona to report themselves at head-quarters with their scalps, instead of allowing them to mature their fraudulent schemes at their own h6mes, and draw upwards of L2OO for work clone in a few weeks, with a considerable balance due, when they had probably not ' earned LSO. But there are, it is to be feared, rainy * ' — many rab~

hit catchers — in Buw South Wales who deserve to be punished as thesw two men have been, with sentences of two years for the former and six months for the latter, on the chui'ge of conspiracy to defraud ; and there is much in this io operate as a cauoion to others elsewhere as well as there. Far be it from us to say there are not as great scoundrels in the other colonies as in New South Wales, employed in rabbit catching, although they lack the opportunity for manufacturing three scalps out of one akin, or of reproducing thousands of those supposed to be burned and no longer to be found. Yet many ugly stories wv.re afloat a year or two ago as to frauds practised by rabbit catchers in the sou'h-eastern portion of South Australia proper,"and there may be now some need for cau tion in Victoria, now that we are abou* to legislate again on the subject. No I means for the destruction of the pests, wherever they exist, should be left unemployed, and no loophole of escape from the meshes of the law for those whose duty it is to enter upon thi s work, and who do it negligently or dis honestly."