SHEEP, RABBITS, AND HARES. To the Editor of the Daily southern Cross.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3403, 12 June 1868, Page 4

SHEEP, RABBITS, AND HARES. To the Editor of the D aily southern Cross.

Sib,— At some discussion is at present going on among the member*, of the Acclimatisation Society and other* with regard to the destructive habits of certain animal*, the folio-wing-- information may be useful. -At a recent meeting of the Staindrop Farmer*' Club, a paper, was read on thp «omparatire, appetite* of sheep and rabbits. Two hogget sheep and twelre full-grown rabbits htd been put up and fed for six -weeks on oats, cut clorer, braD, and roots. At the end of that .timejit-j was ;fojan4 that nine rabbits in captivity ate ,a^ much, as two sheep, and, or course when ' free ,they destroy much more than they consume. Some estimate may thus be formed of the injury done By rabbits. A farm on ■which nine hundred rabbits are shot yearly is taxed far more heavily than if it had to maintain two hunsheep. The sheep, too, are meful in fertilising the land, whilst rabbits are of no' use at all in that capacity. From experiments which were oonducted by a farmer in Perthshire, he found that five hares consumed as" much food as one sheep, and cut and destroyed more. Some ef our scientific farmers might put themselves to the trouble of making a few experiments' on some of the birds or animals said tobe useful or destructive, and 10 help to set the matter at rest. A paper on theJPesta of the Farm might be read with advantage aT~ some of the agricultural meetings.— l am, Ac,, J). Grafton Road, June, 1868.