THE RABBIT PEST.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 90, 19 April 1915, Page 4

THE RABBIT PEST.

Referring to the serious problem which is likely to face the.' Auckland Province in dealing the rabbit pest, the Auckland Star remarks that the damage by rabbits in Australia is incalculable. They are the bane of the pastoralist's life. They will eat a countryside bare, and in drought time will even strip the bark off trees. During the summer, when poisoning is at its height, there is a pestilential smell from the carcases which litter the wayside, and many a water tank on a sunbaked plain is filled with the bodies of rabbits, which, after taking the, phosphorus baits, rush to the nearest waterhole. Although it has never been clearly proved, the,. theory is held] that the phosphorus baits have caused more than one disastrous bush fire, the intense heat of the sun in midsummer- on days when the glass re-i cords up to 115 degrees in the shade—being sufficient to cause the phosphorus to ignite the burnt-up grass. Certain it is that rabbits have more than once caused loss by lire, aud there are occasions on record where fanners have fought fires for hours in the hope of saving crops of golden wheat, ready to harvest, only to hedefeated at the last moment by some rabbit, with its fur aflame, rushing from the hie /one into the standing wheat. Thfe rabbit pest started in Australia much as it has done here—first in a very moderate way, then in more serious dimensions. A pair of rabbits, it is estimated, will be responsible for a million rabbits in ten years. Certain it is that if the pest overruns New Zealand as it has done Australia it will be a sorry day for the landowner. Some parts of New Zealand have already had a quite bad enough experience of the nuisance, and it behoves settlers to take the greatest care to check the evil in its very earliest stages,