The Rabbit Nuisance.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 120, 25 April 1885, Page 3

The Rabbit Nuisance.

The following highly important paragraph appears m the columns of Truth :—" Mr John Connor, Crown Forester of the North- Went Territory Canada, writes as follows, and I think that the Australians would do well to look into his facts.— 'lt would be h good plan to import into Australia someof our rabbit* from here, and see if they could not inoculate the Australian ones with the disease which i« peculiar to them here. It is a well-known fact that when the country becomes nearly overrun with them, they take some disease, like an epizootic, *and die of by, I may «ay, millions. This disease takes place regularly among them every aeven years. This winter, no matter what trail you travel- whether it is from Lac la Biche, Slave Lake, or the Rocky Mountain House— you find dead* rabbits every ten yards or so, and the same thing all over the face of the country, m the bush and on the open. In talking to the Tndisins and halt-breeds, I have ask.-d them if they could assign any cause why the disease should attack the rabbits every seven yearn, and not one have I met yet who win advence any theory. I have thought my>elf there nugl.t b« some plant or shrub which might come periodically off, which they might eat and cau^o the disease, but have failed to detect anything diffeient from other years.