IMPORTATION OF FERRETS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3041, 27 December 1882, Page 2

IMPORTATION OF FERRETS.

There was some warm discussion in Parliamentlast ses-ion as to the advisab’eness or otherwise of introducing ferrets, &c , to this colony for the purpose or exterminating rabbits. The “Colonies and Indies" of October 27 last, referring to this subject says : “The idea of sending out wcasles, stoats, and ferrets to tiro Australian Colonies, to prey upon the surplus population of rabbits, lias been again revived, notwithstanding all the arguments which have been brought forward against the proposal. It would take a few years before these animals would become numerous enough to make any appreciable inroads on the enormous -tock of rabbits which have overrun so many districts ; and before then there is reason to hope that the means now being adopted to deni with the evil will have proved efficacious. Even if they Jo not, the risk of the'Vermin in their turn overrunning the country, and attacking other kinds of animals besides those upon which it was specially intended that (hey should 1 e Ist, would be too groat to justify the experiment. The case of the rabbits should be a sufficient warning against any more heedless attempts at acclimatisation. The loss of the interesting wingless birds of New Zealand, which would inevitably fall a prey to the weasels and stouts, would alone be too great a price to pay for the extermination of the rabbits, which after all, can be turned, and are being turned, to useful and profitable account, while the vermin would have no redeeming, feature—not even that of a white coat and black tail, which, in eld dim >tes, the stoat assumes when be furnishes us with the once highly-prized ‘ ermine.’”