What the Rabbit has Done.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 21 September 1917, Page 4

What the Rabbit has Done.

The fol'owing, taken from the Tuapeka Times, and written by the Dunedin correspondent of that journal, may prove interesting to many of oar readers:—

I recall, how many years ago—it was at a time when the Government and Government officials were very strict in compelling settlers to keep down the rabbit pest—a man said to me (he is long since dead; "bis bones are dust, his soul is with the saints, I tt-ust") "the man who introduced rabbits into the colony (we had not been promoted then to the honour of being a dominion with a real live GovernorGeneral) ought to have a monument erected to him at the south end of Princes street." "Why?" I asked, aghast as this most heterodox opinion. "Because," he answered, "the rabbit is the only thing that stands between us and a riot. Look at our unemployed; what could we do with them if W6 couldn't pack off a few scores of them rabbiting. Thank God for the rabbits, say I," and ha reverently lifted bis hat. "But what about the Government?" I asked. (I heard him mutter "the Government behanged," just as though it were a 1917 combination arrangement.) "Surely they could not ba so ruthless in pressing their legislation unless the rabbit were a costly and dangerous—l say nothing about prolific —intruder? Tnink, too, of the once wealthy runnolders who have been beaten by the rabbit? There are Messrs C G and Go., Colonel So-ard-So and t-e Honourable What's-his-name, all eaten out of house and home?" "May be, may be," he said impatiently, "hut you would have had streets full of unemployed instead of street corner gatherings and deputations to M.H.R.'s (no M.P's. in those Kood old tinus of cheap food, kerosene lamps, and every man his own sanitation agent). I tell you the rabbit is our salvation." As he was manifestly in earnest I let the champion of the bunnies have his way. To-day I know that he was right. Not altogether nor in tbe way that he intended but largely so. The rabbit has come into bis own during tba last 30 years. To-day he is—so they say, deliberately uropagatsd in order to be killed. But not by poisoned, grain. He is caught an skinned. Tne corpse is refrigerated and sent to the Home market there to be sold at anything equivalent to its weight in coppers, and tre skin is cured and dyed and made up into those fur coats which toI day. are the s.andard of feminine luxury and smartness.

Our myraid bunnie3 have their day; Th«?y have their day then cease to he They are quickly changed to £. s. d. Amf that is better far than they. I know a man who a few weeks since built a stylish private garage and" inside it he has an even more stvlish motor car. Both came out of rabbits. Take an evwi more startling illustration. Ten years or so ago a couple of brothers opened an < ffice and f>ir?d a store in Dunedin as hide and skin exporters. One of th»m told an old friend of mine th»t they had difficulty in inducing the bank to finance them at first. They know their business and forged ahead. One died and the other established the firrn'a headquarters at Auckland. The story is soun told. I remember the name quite well but I cou!d not refrain from saying: Eh? ah? oh, what? and a few other other things when I saw in last night's Illuminator under "The New Loan," the name of the firm I have in my mind as subscribers for £50,000 (cut five) worth of «»r scrip. "'And tuat," cnimed in good wife, "makes £60,000 altogether tor th«y invested £IO,OOO in last year's loan." And all out of hides and skins! Wall, if rabbits have not marie the Dominion they have helped t<> makt some pretty substantial in dividual s ? who ure now in it My own personal knowledge of bunny is confined to eating him when he is cooked. I have made no money out of him. •