RABBITS IN WAIKATO.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2736, 25 January 1890, Page 2

RABBITS IN WAIKATO.

TO THK KDU'OH. Sill,— Kindly give me space in your valuable paper, that circulates widely through your district, as well as in Auckland, to fix the attention of tho Waikato on what the liawke'e Bay folks say of your beautiful country. The Daily Telegraph on the 14t.h of January had a leading article on " Rabbits in Waikato," and it was telegraphed to Auckland and published the same evening in the Stan , . It is racy, runs smooth, nnd sets all truth at defiance! regards its own rich grazing grounds as liable to bo overrun with rabbits in famished herds, from what it calU your " desolatu and poverty-stricke i country," mys you produce nothing naturally but Manuka scrub, to alford shelter to the rabbit pests, if. regards them, and sees them with prophetic vision multiplying aud extending themselves south and east to t.ho Kaingaroa plains, the more distant Kiiimanawa and Ruahine Ranges, and from thence descending on tl.eir grazing grounds like locusts in their devastations, to devour up their pastures. It paint4Ji)se country from Taupiri to Ngaruawafija as thick with rabbits," and says they are numerous from Hamilton to Oxford,and sees them approaching through big estates of ruined owners south of you a "desolate waste" fallen into the hands of the Bank of New Zealand and other money-lending institutions? I have always known the Waikato as the best district in the province of Auckland. If the soil is not so rich as that about Napier, it \a better occupied, divided into snug farms with comfortab'o homesteads, producing "corn and winc»" I also know the rabbit to have a high commercial value for both flesh and far. They base their article on a report furnished by "a wellknown drover" Mr Davis. Poor Davi<, in spinning your yarn to the Napier people, you little thought what fears you were creatine. If the Waikato were occupied, as Sir George Grey puts it, only " with a few shepherds and a few sheapshearers, ,, rabbits might increase ad infinitim. Where Napier has sheep, Waikato has people, far more value. If, instead of working themselves into a fit, they cut up their big runs, if miney-lending intitulions would only lot them do it, they would soon populate the country and use up the rabbits. It is only where there are large runs rabbits are regarded with aversion. In the Mission farm between Taupiri and Ngaruawahk la.it year, Mr Stnbbin's could not make the price of the traps by killing rabbits, though he could have sold them for eighteen pence a couple. D.vvis woald have made a fortune, as he says the place is thick with them. I fancy that the Napior people want to get the California!) silver foxes turned loose on your borders. At no distant d\te, if such be effected, you will find the danger coming down upon you, tn> itniginary one, like an influx of harmless rabbits, but animals not to be satiated even v/ith slaughter, endowe 1 with vulpine sagacity that rivals tho reason of many. Animals a deal fonder of poultry than they are of rabbits. We want no n> , ire foxes, we have one too many already in Auckland. Perhaps Mr Rses can enlighten them about foxes.—l am, yours faithfully, J, J.