THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1907. SHEEP AND RABBITS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8450, 29 May 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1907. SHEEP AND RABBITS.

Dr Danysz attaches little scientific value to the report referred to in our cable news recently, of the South Australian delegates sent to Broughton Island. At least he told an interviewer so on leaving Sydney. He goes back to France satisfied with the scientfic success of his experiments with his rabbit virus, but disappointed that he was not allowed a fair field in his investigations. He complained to the interviewer that a whole year had been spent in fighting more against opposition of a political and financial character than against the real enemy, the rabbit; ,and that as time went on and experiments proved beyond, doubt that the virus was dangerous to rabbits only, the opposition became more acute and his opponents, worsted in argument, prophesied purely imaginary dangers. Dr. Danysz had something very interesting to say on the comparative economic values of sheep and rabbits. No precise experiments have been made on the comparative nutrition of rabbits and sheep, but he estimated that a rabbit needed every day onefifth of its weight in food, and that in proportion to its weight it must eat three times as much as a sheep. In weight one sheep represented 25 rabbits, but m food required one sheep represented only eight or ten rabbits, therefore the same quantity and quality of food which, turned into mutton, wool and skin, represented a value of from 15s to 20s, represented, when turned into rabbits, only two or three shillings. "If actually on a station one acre can carry one sheep and about 20 rabbits the same area will—given equal conditions—be able to carry two sheep,

when the number of rabbits has been reduced by 50 percent," says Dr. Danysz. In Australia rabbits will, thinks the doctor, remain the principal bar to progress in agriculture and stock-raising until the people adopt more efficacious methods of fighting the pest. He considers there should be a permanent laboratory, not only for experiments in rabbit extermination, but for investigation into diseases of animals generally.